Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: IPAndrews on October 31, 2007, 03:15:18 am
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All religions should be wiped off the face of the earth. The word of god has been a convenient excuse for mistreating your fellow man for far too long.
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Being perfect matters not to tyrants...
Point out where I said anyone needed to be 'perfect'? All i'm saying is that it'd be a lot easier to gain support and make a difference against this sort of thing if Iran (or whatever) couldn't instantly turn around and say "well you still execute people by the electric chair!" etc. This isn't about one single issue, it's about cleaning up the **** in your own backyard before *****ing to the neighbor about how crappy his place looks.
All religions should be wiped off the face of the earth. The word of god has been a convenient excuse for mistreating your fellow man for far too long.
Amen to that, brother. :nod:
Heh... don't worry, you get your chance... all 7 years of it. But it will be one religion, not none. And you will like it. Or die. Of course, you could always become a Christian, even during that time, then at least you'd go to Heaven when you died. But I digress. EDIT: I'm speaking of the rule of the Anti-Christ here, just in case you aren't well-read.
All religions should be wiped off the face of the earth. The word of god has been a convenient excuse for mistreating your fellow man for far too long.
BTW... have you ever considered the fact that you have now officially spouted hate speech? Chew on that for a little. :lol: Or did you mean doing that non-violently? Because that would be impossible. And, even with violence, it would still be impossible. :rolleyes:
And, don't deceive yourself. If there was no religion, people would kill each other just because. Using religion is man's way of trying to excuse his heinous crime of hating his brother. Take away one excuse, they'll just use another.
The reason for the anti-US sentiment is because it's pretty obvious what this is REALLY all about.
How come no one is having a go at other countries in the world which are equally brutal. For that matter, how come no one is mentioning Saudi Arabia?
I don't know, but I'd really like to see those countries have a chance to feel a US (and/or other allied nations) boot in their butt.. they need it. I guess because the citizens of most countries (including ours) are too lazy and indifferent to care about the suffering of their fellow man if it doesn't threaten them.
This is the exact same **** that happened before the invasion of Iraq and I can't believe anyone would be gullible enough to fall for it a second time. :rolleyes:
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BTW... have you ever considered the fact that you have now officially spouted hate speech? Chew on that for a little. :lol:
Yes I hate all religions and what they have done to the world and given 10 minutes and a history book I could persuade you to think the same way. When you're right, it's not difficult to defend your position.
Or did you mean doing that non-violently? Because that would be impossible.
Don't be ridiculous. Have you ever tried talking someone out of a religion? It's far from impossible. If someone can be persuaded to believe in something as stupid as a religion they can easily be convinced of the bloody obvious truth. The real problem are those people who believe in a religion as a convenience to allow themselves to either avoid certain truths or behave in a certain way. But therapy or jail does for them.
Be glad I do not rule the world. It would make a good omelette, but boy would I break some eggs.
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All religions should be wiped off the face of the earth. The word of god has been a convenient excuse for mistreating your fellow man for far too long.
Yes, because "love thy enemy" is the most dangerous doctrine ever conceived.
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Yes, because "love thy enemy" is the most dangerous doctrine ever conceived.
Reality is fun. Pay it a visit one day.
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Yes, but religion makes it so much easier to find support for hate, to separate people. There's no denying that hardliners will always find a way to hate people, and it will always be in humanity's nature to destroy itself. However, by taking away such a provocative reason as religion as a way of dividing humanity, it'd be much harder to drum up popular support among the dim-witted and ignorant: The first people to march to war. Effectively, you'd be taking the megaphones off the crazies, which I believe will make the world a much calmer, more rational place to live our lives.
:lol: in your dreams. Taking away religion would do nothing to minimize wars and brutality. Actually, it would probably have the OPPOSITE effect.
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Don't be ridiculous. Have you ever tried talking someone out of a religion? It's far from impossible. If someone can be persuaded to believe in something as stupid as a religion they can easily be convinced of the bloody obvious truth. The real problem are those people who believe in a religion as a convenience to allow themselves to either avoid certain truths or behave in a certain way. But therapy or jail does for them.
Be glad I do not rule the world. It would make a good omelette, but boy would I break some eggs.
Don't be ridiculous. Have you ever tried talking someone out of atheism? It's far from impossible. If someone can be persuaded to believe in something as stupid as atheism they can easily be convinced of the bloody obvious truth. The real problem are those people who believe in atheism as a convenience to allow themselves to either avoid certain truths or behave in a certain way. But therapy or jail does for them.
Be sad I do not rule the world. It would make a good omelette, with some jerky. ;7
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Removing religion would remove a reason to hate someone. It would remove one of the idealogical differences between us all.
A world without any of the current organized religions, while eliminating some of the good sides of the doctrines in them, would eliminate the massive downsides.
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Reality is fun. Pay it a visit one day.
I live in it, last time I checked. And I happen to know quite a number deeply religious people who also live in it. Funny, though; I don't recall any of them ever threatening violence against another group of people, or taking up arms against those who live a different lifestyle, or acting as a detriment to global society, or doing anything more heinous than cursing at their televisions during a sporting event. Wonder why that is.
Have many atrocities been committed over the course of humanity's history in the name of "religion"? Yes. Are there still groups of people today that use their "beliefs" to justify horrific actions? Of course. Were/are these groups in any way representative of the core values and fundamental principles of their respective faiths? Overwhelmingly, not in the least. Would we have seen and continue to see such violence were religion to have never existed in the first place? Undoubtedly. The good old "hurhurreligionisebilletsbanit" argument is every bit as deluded as those who believe that strapping TNT and nails onto their chests will garner them a bunch of hot chicks.
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Undoubtedly. The good old "hurhurreligionisebilletsbanit" argument is every bit as deluded as those who believe that strapping TNT and nails onto their chests will garner them a bunch of hot chicks.
Yes, theorizing that the world would be a calmer place without institutionalized religion is so much like suicide bombing. I can't believe I never saw the connection before now! :)
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oi! you two. Go to the *****-alert! thread instead. :p
You'd even be on topic there.
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Removing religion would remove a reason to love someone
Are you honestly saying you need religion as a motivation to love? I've never believed in god in my life, and I've loved. Painfully sometimes as well as passionately.
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Removing religion would remove a reason to hate someone. It would remove one of the idealogical differences between us all.
A world without any of the current organized religions, while eliminating some of the good sides of the doctrines in them, would eliminate the massive downsides.
People are made to hate other groups of people, it's genetic. (I can't back this up, but I think it's pretty clear)
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Removing religion would remove ANOTHER reason to love someone
Are you honestly saying you need religion as a motivation to love? I've never believed in god in my life, and I've loved. Painfully sometimes as well as passionately.
fixored
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it would also remove a reason to HATE someone.
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Removing religion would remove a reason to hate someone. It would remove one of the idealogical differences between us all.
A world without any of the current organized religions, while eliminating some of the good sides of the doctrines in them, would eliminate the massive downsides.
People are made to hate other groups of people, it's genetic. (I can't back this up, but I think it's pretty clear)
Not genetic, social, the Romans were, for example, fine with Egyptian Religion and with African ethnicity, yet the had big problems with Christians for a while, as well as with other mediterranean races. It's all about what it is suitable to hate at the time. As Kara mentioned about Saudi Arabia, and Nuclear correctly answered, it's all about what we get from them, not what they do to each other.
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It's social, but our sociality is in itself part of being human, and all aspects related to that human socialness are therefore part of being human. Orangutans are social, but they rarely kill each other
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Thing is, fear of the unknown is a genetic trait, that much is certain, Orangutans, as you say, rarely attack or kill each other, but if a member of another 'group' of Orangutans enters their territory, it's a whole other matter, that's the genetic side at work.
The problem is, however, social as well, for example, in the UK we have 15-year olds committing racially motivated attacks against Africans and Asians, now both races have been a pretty common sight in the UK, particuarly London for about 20 years, so they aren't 'unknown' to a 15 year-old, they've been seeing and interacting with other races all their lives, the motivation there is Parents, Peers and Media. Orangutans may attack other groups that enter their territory, but they don't teach their children to hate the group on the other side of the hill, they simply don't care about them unless there's a territorial problem, and then it is fear that motivates their actions more than Social conditioning. Though, to be perfectly fair, in the case of Primates, there may be more to it than that.
Also it needs to be borne in mind that if Orangutans had guns instead of fists, they'd probably kill a lot more of each other.
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Removing religion would not solve ALL problems, but it would remove a major barrier between people.
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I'm going to split the removing religion part of the thread cause it's worth a separate discussion on its own.
As for whether removing religion would make the world better, I'm in two minds on that one. There are a lot of people who don't act like dickheads because they're worried about what will happen to them in the afterlife. It's pretty hard to tell if removing that incentive would thus make them think that they had carte blanche to generally act like pricks to each other.
Religion gives a lot of people an excuse to act like total wankers. But would people like Fred Phelps be less of a wanker without religion? Maybe. Maybe without the ability to have rock hard certainty that he's correct thanks to his faith he'd have to check whether he is actually correct. On the other hand you can see what cocksucker he is when he professes to believe in the bible and the message of Jesus. Maybe without all the stuff about being nice to people in there he'd be like that to everybody rather than simply picking a random group.
So I'm not going to say that removing religion would make the world a better place. It might. It might make it worse.
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Well I don't want anyone complaining about me not re-railing discussions that go off-topic. :p
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Easy tiger.
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Well I don't want anyone complaining about me not re-railing discussions that go off-topic. :p
But, if you don't, aren't there like 4 or 5 others who should do it for you? Thus making it so that you can avoid accusations of partiality? Or is it more like "kj is active in that thread... let him handle it while we duck and cover!" :lol: (I'm trying to be funny here, so laugh a little :p )
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Neither. I was actually referring to Stealth's complaint that I didn't re-rail the "neato scale model" thread. :)
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I like the way my over the top extremist ramblings now have their own topic :cool:
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I think Religion serves either to fulfill a strong need or want that most people have of feeling like they're part of something 'bigger' or that they have a purpose in life. I think that the fact that people are willing to devote so much to religion suggests that it's not something that can just be disappeared.
In its place, I would see a whole bunch of self-help style businesses springing up, I'm not sure that I like the idea of that. Better to have a bunch of misguided but well-meaning people than to have a mass of ignorant savages under the command of someone ruthless enough to take advantage of the situation.
Better the devil you know, imho.
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Why can't these people find themselves hobbies? Do something for the community? Go into therapy? Aren't these all better alternatives to joining a religion. The amount of blood spilt over religious disputes and in the name of fictional deities is inconceivable. On the other hand nobody has died due to a dispute of Freespace 2 modding.
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Aren't these all better alternatives to joining a religion.
Why do you assume that the two are mutually exclusive?
On the other hand nobody has died due to a dispute of Freespace 2 modding.
Nobody ever really turned their life around because of it, either, to my knowledge. At the very least, it's not a common occurence. And if you want to go that route, is it really all that different for someone to invest their time in a make-believe universe than it would be for them to invest their time in a make-believe god?
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I think Religion serves either to fulfill a strong need or want that most people have of feeling like they're part of something 'bigger' or that they have a purpose in life.
Agreed. But how much of that need is reinforced by contact with other people who already have that same feeling?
Like I said earlier I'm still on the fence about this one. I agree though that religion does have an important role to play in the lives of certain kind f people. The question is how easily that could be replaced with something else that would have the good aspects of religion and none of the bad ones.
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Why do you assume that the two are mutually exclusive?
I didn't. I'm merely providing alternatives as a way of undermining your argument for religion's supposed usefulness.
Nobody ever really turned their life around because of it, either
So you think the positives of religions outweigh the negatives?
And if you want to go that route, is it really all that different for someone to invest their time in a make-believe universe than it would be for them to invest their time in a make-believe god?
Yes. The difference is the difference in related atrocities. Crusading, sucide bombing, DaveB worshipping modders. Just ain't happening mate.
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To completely remove religions => remove existential questioning.
To remove existential questioning => remove the ability to think.
To completely remove religions => remove the ability to think.
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Are you suggesting that atheism is a religion? Or implying that atheist don't think? :wtf:
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I agree with Swantz on this, religion is a reason to hate. Why were the crusades started? Instead of going to church, people could easily volunteer at the food bank, or join a fund raiser for cancer. Religion doesn't cure disease, or hunger. I'm sure that some of you will disagree, though.
And atheists do think, It is the religious sheep who are content to follow the pack.
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So you think the positives of religions outweigh the negatives?
No, I think that the extreme negatives that you point to as being caused by religion only occur because of something else. I don't see many religious jihads happening in the United States; I certainly hear of more car crashes than religious jihads in the United States. The worst I hear of is some legal intolerance; and yet I believe that that's also because people fear things and then use their religion as an excuse.
And if you want to go that route, is it really all that different for someone to invest their time in a make-believe universe than it would be for them to invest their time in a make-believe god?
Yes. The difference is the difference in related atrocities. Crusading, sucide bombing, DaveB worshipping modders. Just ain't happening mate.
Actually, I was thinking more along the lines of "there is no gain without risk". We do things in FS2 Modding that doesn't cause strong feelings, so its potential for life-changing good is less. But that also means that its potential for harm is less. We have our own form of crusading; look at what happened with Derek Smart. It's simply that FS2 modding doesn't affect people to the point where they're willing to go out and risk their lives for it.
The extremes of religion are, IMHO, more a consequence of the basic nature of people than of some inherent nature of people. Having a ****ty day? Doesn't matter. God loves you and has a plan. If that person really believes that, they're going to be happier as a consequence, and probably have a better day because they won't be a jackass to everyone they meet.
Of course, then there are the people that want to use that for hate-mongering. Don't hate homosexuals? Doesn't matter. God knows better and has a plan.
But I think that it is much more likely that a non-sheep religious person will go, "Wait a minute - Jesus bases his philosophy on love and forgiveness. Does it really make sense, then, to go out and hate people in His name?"
And I think that an atheist sheep are just as likely to do wrong things out of "going with the flock" as religious sheep. But it's the religious sheep that you see committing all the hate crimes, because the non-sheep are too smart to get involved in that.
Or in other words, being a sheep transcends being religious or non-religious.
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Google "Benny Hinn". Point proven. It may only be one person, but look at the effect that religion can have on people.
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Martin Luther King, Jr. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Luther_King)
Mahatma Gandhi (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gandhi)
Even Albert Einstein (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albert_Einstein).
Has religion now outlived its usefulness because we have the internet?
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Einstein is a bad example. He wasted his last 30 years trying to disprove quantum mechanics cause "God does not play dice"
No, I think that the extreme negatives that you point to as being caused by religion only occur because of something else. I don't see many religious jihads happening in the United States; I certainly hear of more car crashes than religious jihads in the United States. The worst I hear of is some legal intolerance; and yet I believe that that's also because people fear things and then use their religion as an excuse.
The US is a much more secular nation than the countries that do have Jihads. There's no reason to believe that it couldn't easily swing round to being a theocracy again if the conditions were right. The so called "Moral Majority" would love to see that happen.
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Also, note that there are 'religions' other than Christ-based, and Islamic ones.
Consider Tao, Hinduism, Buddhism, Wiccan...
(And perhaps also Pastafarian, Jedi... :P)
Love or Hate is not due to religian - That is just us. I believe the word is prejudice.
You'll get prejudice whenever you have differences in some arbitrary metric.
Given that we're all stuck on this ball of molten minerals covered with a layer of worm****, I think I've got more interesting things to complain about.
Like bus fares. Two pounds! Two-****ing-pounds!! How the **** is a two-stop journey worth two smegging pounds?!!? And this is how the government wants to encourage the use of public transport?!?!
It'd cost a fraction of that much to drive that distance!! (Well... if it wasn't for the fragging parking meters - One gob****ting pound per half hour!! I mean... WTF?!!? :hopping:)
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I agree with Swantz on this, religion is a reason to hate. Why were the crusades started? Instead of going to church, people could easily volunteer at the food bank, or join a fund raiser for cancer. Religion doesn't cure disease, or hunger. I'm sure that some of you will disagree, though.
Ugh..I so hate it when people bring ancient history into this debates..and allways the crusades. Waht happened, happened. It's in the history. and you should know that religion wasn't the prime motivation for those wars - it was teritory and riches, as allways.
Food bank? Helping the poor? What do you think the Church does, and hte church-going people? Church encourages you to help your fellow man, organizes shelter and food for the homeless, education and help for the 3rd world countries.
The Curch is the biggest humanitarian organization in the world...yeah, I see how the world would be a better place wihtout it :rolleyes:
And atheists do think, It is the religious sheep who are content to follow the pack.
Console yourself with those words. You follow a pack just as much as religios people do, only it's of a different kind and name.
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All religions should be wiped off the face of the earth. The word of god has been a convenient excuse for mistreating your fellow man for far too long.
Is this guy serious? Talk about lack of experience.
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Einstein is a bad example. He wasted his last 30 years trying to disprove quantum mechanics cause "God does not play dice"
The full quote, according to Wikipedia, is: "I, at any rate, am convinced that He [God] does not throw dice."
Here's an excerpt from a public lecture by Stephen Hawking (http://www.hawking.org.uk/lectures/lindex.html):
Einstein was very unhappy about this apparent randomness in nature. His views were summed up in his famous phrase, 'God does not play dice'. He seemed to have felt that the uncertainty was only provisional: but that there was an underlying reality, in which particles would have well defined positions and speeds, and would evolve according to deterministic laws, in the spirit of Laplace. This reality might be known to God, but the quantum nature of light would prevent us seeing it, except through a glass darkly.
Furthermore, if Wikipedia can be believed, the Einstein vs Bohr debates on the subject were not quite as useless as you make them out to be, and helped form the groundwork for Quantum Mechanics. Indeed, if nobody had ever tried to refute the theory, I would be concerned about its accuracy.
Now this is all from about ten minutes from research, but what this suggests to me is that Einstein wasn't saying that QM isn't true because "God doesn't play dice", he was saying that "God doesn't play dice" because QM isn't true. Again according to Wikipedia, he did revise his views through the debates, so it would seem to me that he was actually reaching a conclusion based on evidence, rather than religious opinion (However wrong that conclusion may have been).
The US is a much more secular nation than the countries that do have Jihads. There's no reason to believe that it couldn't easily swing round to being a theocracy again if the conditions were right. The so called "Moral Majority" would love to see that happen.
If we are truly that close to the edge, then how do we know that we aren't the sheep? How do we know that we aren't the ones who are morally flawed?
But I don't believe that a true theocracy would reasonably occur in the near future in the United States. There are so many denominations in the US that it would not be as easy as you suggest; if Catholics took control, how would non-Catholics know that the Catholics wouldn't make laws against them? And vice-versa if non-Catholics took control. And I don't see Muslims, Jews, etc just accepting that state of things.
NB: According to the 2001 Statistical Abstract (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/population/religion/), 1/5 of the total population is non-Christian. (Note that the statistics are based on a representative random telephone survey of the Continental US.)
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Food bank? Helping the poor? What do you think the Church does, and hte church-going people? Church encourages you to help your fellow man, organizes shelter and food for the homeless, education and help for the 3rd world countries.
I'll agree that the church does a lot of work dealing with the poor and hungry.
That said the church also does a lot of work preventing the teaching of sex ed in the 3rd world and preventing the distribution of contraceptives. Meaning that there are more poor and hungry.
Hard to say to what degree that balances out.
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I'm fairly sure Einstein was being metaphorical, to put across his point in ways stupid people (i.e. everyone) can at least grasp if not understand. So that quote doesn't really have much relevence in this waste-of-electrons discussion :)
One thing about Einstein was that he could take high-level physics and general science stuff and, explain it in ways that could be understood and made sense.
Not many people can do that.
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Furthermore, if Wikipedia can be believed, the Einstein vs Bohr debates on the subject were not quite as useless as you make them out to be, and helped form the groundwork for Quantum Mechanics. Indeed, if nobody had ever tried to refute the theory, I would be concerned about its accuracy.
There is a large difference between attempting to refute a theory and attempting to invent one of your own against an increasing mountain of evidence that you're wrong.
Now this is all from about ten minutes from research, but what this suggests to me is that Einstein wasn't saying that QM isn't true because "God doesn't play dice", he was saying that "God doesn't play dice" because QM isn't true. Again according to Wikipedia, he did revise his views through the debates, so it would seem to me that he was actually reaching a conclusion based on evidence, rather than religious opinion (However wrong that conclusion may have been).
Here's (http://www.bbc.co.uk/sn/tvradio/programmes/horizon/einstein_symphony_prog_summary.shtml) the BBC Horizon page on a documentary about the very subject.
Einstein's work was underpinned by the idea that the laws of physics were an expression of the divine. This belief led him to think that everything could be described by simple, elegant mathematics and moreover, that once you knew these laws you could describe the universe with absolute accuracy. Einstein loathed the implications of quantum mechanics. It was a clash of ideologies.
The conflict reached a crescendo in the late 1920s at the Solvay Conference in Belgium. There Einstein clashed with the great Danish physicist Niels Bohr over the nature of the universe. Einstein constantly challenged Bohr over the implications of quantum mechanics, but never budged from his belief that "God does not play dice", meaning that nothing would be left to chance in the universe. To which the quantum mechanics community replied: "Einstein, stop telling God what to do with his dice."
The US is a much more secular nation than the countries that do have Jihads. There's no reason to believe that it couldn't easily swing round to being a theocracy again if the conditions were right. The so called "Moral Majority" would love to see that happen.
If we are truly that close to the edge, then how do we know that we aren't the sheep? How do we know that we aren't the ones who are morally flawed?
Since when has holding a minority view made you wrong? Try looking at the quality of the people who do want a theocratic nation.
But I don't believe that a true theocracy would reasonably occur in the near future in the United States. There are so many denominations in the US that it would not be as easy as you suggest; if Catholics took control, how would non-Catholics know that the Catholics wouldn't make laws against them? And vice-versa if non-Catholics took control. And I don't see Muslims, Jews, etc just accepting that state of things.
NB: According to the 2001 Statistical Abstract (http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/population/religion/), 1/5 of the total population is non-Christian. (Note that the statistics are based on a representative random telephone survey of the Continental US.)
Near future, no. 30-40 years, very easily if the conditions were right.
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Are you suggesting that atheism is a religion? Or implying that atheist don't think? :wtf:
No, if I had also claimed that all people think alike I would be suggesting/implying that.
I was just stating a recipe for achieving the goal that was set (which clearly is not worth the price paid, IMO) :)
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I'll agree that the church does a lot of work dealing with the poor and hungry.
That said the church also does a lot of work preventing the teaching of sex ed in the 3rd world and preventing the distribution of contraceptives. Meaning that there are more poor and hungry.
Hard to say to what degree that balances out.
Pffft...
Why do you think people there have so many children?.. they ain't got nothing else to do the whole day :blah:
B.t.w. - condoms you get aren't 100% effective, and the 3rd world countries don't really get top-of-the-line stuff.
Half the shipments are prolly company rejects.
So yeah, abstinance is the only sure method.
B.t.w. - the Church isn't preventing sex education there, it just doesn't organize any itself.
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Since when has holding a minority view made you wrong? Try looking at the quality of the people who do want a theocratic nation.
Becoause the minority is never wrong? :wtf:
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When did I say that? :rolleyes: I simply said that the number of people who believe something has no validity on whether or not it is the truth.
B.t.w. - the Church isn't preventing sex education there, it just doesn't organize any itself.
The Vatican has actively spread lies about the effectiveness of condoms against HIV in an effort to prevent their use.
Why do you think people there have so many children?.. they ain't got nothing else to do the whole day :blah:
I'd be willing to bet that they do more work than you do.
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It's worth noting the events that took place scarcely a month ago (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml;jsessionid=KFUXK5SV5ENYTQFIQMGCFFWAVCBQUIV0?xml=/opinion/2007/09/29/do2904.xml)...
Something old is playing out. On one side, shaved heads and ranks of red robes; on the other, frightened and angry young men in uniforms, banging their batons against their riot shields and raising their rifles. Barricades, plumes of smoke from teargas canisters. And Buddhist monks, wearing sandals, staring down the guns.
It's very moving. But more than that, it is food for thought. This - these monks staring down the guns - presents a problem for a militant secularist in the Dawkins or Hitchens mould. I don't mean that it has any bearing on the argument about whether there is or is not a God. Buddhist monks don't worship anything resembling the God on whom the Dawkins guns are trained in any case; and the fact that they stare down the guns doesn't make a difference to whether or not what they believe is true.
But stare down those guns they do - and their behaviour does have a strong bearing on the question of whether religious belief "poisons everything", as Hitchens puts it. I'd submit, as an irreligious bystander, that one of the things that helps those monks hold the line is faith. The form that their resistance takes is shaped by that faith - and it is uniquely powerful.
People can argue theory and philosophy all day, but when the rubber meets the road, nothing beats empirical evidence.
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Why do you think people there have so many children?.. they ain't got nothing else to do the whole day :blah:
Clarify, because it sounds like babble at the moment.
B.t.w. - condoms you get aren't 100% effective, and the 3rd world countries don't really get top-of-the-line stuff.
Uh... no, it's not. But it's among the safest methods of birth-control their is. (IIRC the actually sucess rate of a condom is something like 90%.. gee, what a fun conversation ;))
Half the shipments are prolly company rejects.
Proof?
So yeah, abstinance is the only sure method.
No, it's not. Condoms are quite safe, and even if they break... that's when you get the Morning After pill which virtualy makes very much sure that the lady-friend (the patent's mine, buddy) doesn't get preggers.
EDITed to fix my post.
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it's actually more like 98%
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(Einstein stuff)
If we say that Einstein has a big enough ego to believe that he can know the mind of God, why can't we say that it was his ego that kept him from saying that he was wrong and Bohr was right?
Since when has holding a minority view made you wrong? Try looking at the quality of the people who do want a theocratic nation.
You're saying that the US is going to become a theocracy, against the wishes of atheists. Ergo, the people who practice atheism will fail to get what they want, while the people who practice religion will have been successful.
If atheism leads to failure in the long run, while religion leads to success, how does that make atheism 'better' than religion? Or in the context of discussion, why should everyone convert to atheism if the only people who can use it effectively are a minority?
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Are you suggesting that atheism is a religion? Or implying that atheist don't think? :wtf:
No, if I had also claimed that all people think alike I would be suggesting/implying that.
I was just stating a recipe for achieving the goal that was set (which clearly is not worth the price paid, IMO) :)
Explain that a little better. How would removing religion, which is based on dogma, remove the ability to think?
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No, I wrote that removing the ability to think would remove religion, not the other way around.
Also, what is dogma? Nothing but a creation of the human mind - its ability to think.
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B.t.w. - the Church isn't preventing sex education there, it just doesn't organize any itself.
The Vatican has actively spread lies about the effectiveness of condoms against HIV in an effort to prevent their use.
any proof thay are lies? Company testing doesn't realyl mean squat, FYI.
Also, even assuming the Church did blow the numbers out of proportion, how does that prevent sex education? Anyone can still set up a school there and tell the people whatever he wants..more or less.
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No, I wrote that removing the ability to think would remove religion, not the other way around.
Also, what is dogma? Nothing but a creation of the human mind - its ability to think.
My mistake then.
But the thing is that removing the ability to think would also remove a lot of things so that in itself is not much of a point. Unless you wanted to start a debate about the merits of religion on the human mind, in which case, dogma restricts critical thinking (which was my earlier point).
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If we say that Einstein has a big enough ego to believe that he can know the mind of God, why can't we say that it was his ego that kept him from saying that he was wrong and Bohr was right?
Because that wasn't what was going on. Einstein made the classic faith vs science mistake. He took the world as being a certain way on faith and then tried to scientifically prove he was correct. His opposition was not based on the fact he thought his theory was correct. He knew it was deeply flawed and he spent 30 years trying to find where the flaws were. Had it simply been a matter of ego I doubt he would have accepted that the theory was deeply flawed.
Einstein kept trying to prove that the universe was deterministic because he believed it was against an increasing amount of evidence that is wasn't. And the reason he believed that is because he thought that God wouldn't do something like that. In other words he followed his faith rather than the scientific method.
Since when has holding a minority view made you wrong? Try looking at the quality of the people who do want a theocratic nation.
You're saying that the US is going to become a theocracy, against the wishes of atheists.
Incorrect. I've said that it could become a theocracy. That's very different. It could also become more secular. My argument is in response to those who think it could never become a theocracy.
Ergo, the people who practice atheism will fail to get what they want, while the people who practice religion will have been successful.
If atheism leads to failure in the long run, while religion leads to success, how does that make atheism 'better' than religion? Or in the context of discussion, why should everyone convert to atheism if the only people who can use it effectively are a minority?
The subject of the discussion is whether the world would be a better place if everyone has converted to atheism. If that happened there wouldn't be any religion so your argument makes little sense.
any proof thay are lies? Company testing doesn't realyl mean squat, FYI.
The Vatican claimed that the HIV virus was small enough that it could pass straight through condoms. There is no scientific evidence of that besides a very dodgy done by the Vatican itself. Every single other piece of scientific literature on the subject says the exact opposite.
So we're not talking about faulty condoms and the like. They flat out claimed that no condom protects against HIV.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/23/health/main608255.shtml
Also, even assuming the Church did blow the numbers out of proportion, how does that prevent sex education? Anyone can still set up a school there and tell the people whatever he wants..more or less.
Anyone can. But if the priest is telling you not to use condoms and you trust priests why would you believe the other side?
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No, I wrote that removing the ability to think would remove religion, not the other way around.
Also, what is dogma? Nothing but a creation of the human mind - its ability to think.
Unless you wanted to start a debate about the merits of religion on the human mind, in which case, dogma restricts critical thinking (which was my earlier point).
Not at all, I agree there. It is just the idea of "removing all religions" which I find futile.
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My mistake then.
But the thing is that removing the ability to think would also remove a lot of things so that in itself is not much of a point. Unless you wanted to start a debate about the merits of religion on the human mind, in which case, dogma restricts critical thinking (which was my earlier point).
There's more than one kind of dogma, too. Shall we eliminate political idealogy as well while we're at it? That too would be a worthwhile, perhaps even more greatly worthwile, act in this context of making the world a better place. Unfortunately you can't. Dogma springs from the principles one holds, and hence comes from within for at least the first few people who accept it. Eliminating it is not something that can be made workable with humans.
While personally athesistic myself (you know the joke about "my karma ran over my dogma"? It works in surprisingly literal fashion here.), I find the concept of removing religion from the equation repugnant because, when you get right down to it, no matter the possibly Mein Kampf-esque implications of saying it, you will not make the world a better place by removing all opposing viewpoints. If nobody ever challenges your way of thinking, it becomes much easier to go wrong and not realize it.
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Removing all religion... Not going to happen in the near future IMO.
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The Vatican claimed that the HIV virus was small enough that it could pass straight through condoms. There is no scientific evidence of that besides a very dodgy done by the Vatican itself. Every single other piece of scientific literature on the subject says the exact opposite.
So we're not talking about faulty condoms and the like. They flat out claimed that no condom protects against HIV.
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2004/03/23/health/main608255.shtml
Did you even read the link you posted? Vatican still hasn't an official position on condom usage (still being debated). A personal oppinion of a cardinal or two arn't the official Church stance. so don't blow this way out of proportion.
Anyone can. But if the priest is telling you not to use condoms and you trust priests why would you believe the other side?
In other words, by saying that the moon is 1400000km away from the Earth I am PREVENTING education?
It's tilll not preventing...and read above.
EDIT: Just to bring things into perspective, did anyone notice that the worlds greatest butchers weren't motivated by religion - quite the opposite.
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Did you even read the link you posted? Vatican still hasn't an official position on condom usage (still being debated). A personal oppinion of a cardinal or two arn't the official Church stance. so don't blow this way out of proportion.
It was never countermanded by either of the popes (this whole mess started during John Paul II's time). And the Vatican report is was not simply the personal opinion of one or two cardinals. And finally failing to state a position despite huge external and internal pressure to do so for over 10 years IS a position.
In other words, by saying that the moon is 1400000km away from the Earth I am PREVENTING education?
It's tilll not preventing...and read above.
If people actually trusted you to be correct then you would be. Fortunately I doubt anyone on this forum would believe you so people wanting to know the distance will go to a source they trust instead.
But if the source they trust deliberately spreads misinformation in order to further their goals then yes, that is preventing education because time now needs to be spent counteracting that misinformation instead of simply teaching new stuff.
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You do relise abstinance IS the only way to be safe.
Take a couple that s together for 20 years. How many times do you think they will sleep together during that period? 100? 200?
That 90-95% efficiency of condoms starts to look pretty lame the more you do it.. and people do do it..a lot.
Also, don't froget that while Vatican still didn't issue a official stance, the current message I'm getting from them is "If you gonan do it anyway, then better use them."
This is nothing but antoher media-inflated sensationalist attack on the Church.
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Also, don't froget that while Vatican still didn't issue a official stance, the current message I'm getting from them is "If you gonan do it anyway, then better use them."
Praytell, where are you getting this message from? So far, the link Kara posted has demonstrated the kind of thing that seems to be coming out of the Church, and they're not exactly covering up the official "anti sex-for-pleasure" line so prevalent in Catholic dogma.
So, yeah, could you explain where you've been getting this message?
This is nothing but antoher media-inflated sensationalist attack on the Church.
Well, of course. After all, reality has a well known liberal bias. :rolleyes:
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You do relise abstinance IS the only way to be safe.
no it's the only way to be without any risk at all, 95% is safe.
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You do relise abstinance IS the only way to be safe.
Take a couple that s together for 20 years. How many times do you think they will sleep together during that period? 100? 200?
That 90-95% efficiency of condoms starts to look pretty lame the more you do it.. and people do do it..a lot.
There is a huge difference between what is safe and claiming that condoms are ineffective against AIDS because the virus can pass straight through the condom.
One is an opinion as to what is safe while the other is an outright lie. An outright lie which has been spread by an office of the Vatican and which was not countermanded despite calls from AIDS charities to do so.
As I said before in some cases having no opinion IS an opinion. And it's obvious that the reason why the Vatican didn't stop the spread of such a lie was because it suited their agenda.
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I love how everyone ignored Goober, who was the only one so far with practical evidence.
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Praytell, where are you getting this message from? So far, the link Kara posted has demonstrated the kind of thing that seems to be coming out of the Church, and they're not exactly covering up the official "anti sex-for-pleasure" line so prevalent in Catholic dogma.
So, yeah, could you explain where you've been getting this message?[/quoteg
My uncle (preist for 50 years, highly educated) and the local priest. I asked them.
The current stance of the Church is as follows:
- It's against condomms, but if you're gonan have sex anyway and htere's danger of desease, use em.
The reasoning is quite simple - If you only sleep with your wife, and none of you have HIV, you don't NEED a condom, as you'll never get it...unless your wife isn't the only one you're sleeping with.
You f'course realsie the Church is als oagainst sex before marriage.
This is nothing but antoher media-inflated sensationalist attack on the Church.
Well, of course. After all, reality has a well known liberal bias. :rolleyes:
I don't have to prove it, it's a well known fact.
In fact, I'd probably have more trouble proving to you the sky is blue.
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I notice how you don't refute the claims I made while still claiming that there is no substance to them.
Funny that.
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I still havn't looked into that.
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I love how everyone ignored Goober, who was the only one so far with practical evidence.
Except that the article he posted is sort of weird. They seem paint secularism in some sort of strange, militant light. I get that the author is trying to extol the virtues of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming danger, and that's pretty cool, but it shouldn't be taken as a demonstration of what religious value has over that of atheistic values.
The power demonstrated by those monks comes from the human spirit, and to attribute it to some sort of spiritual being cheapens the feat of people like this. They stand up to the Junta because of their unwavering belief in democracy and a free society, not because they think some spiritual being told them to or they're going to be rewarded in the afterlife.
If anything, it demonstrates that humanity doesn't need Gods like that of Christianity or Islam to give humanity strength, all we need to do is be cool to one another. :)
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See that was all I was looking for, some type of response :yes2::nod::yes:
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Except that the article he posted is sort of weird. They seem paint secularism in some sort of strange, militant light. I get that the author is trying to extol the virtues of the human spirit in the face of overwhelming danger, and that's pretty cool, but it shouldn't be taken as a demonstration of what religious value has over that of atheistic values.
The author was pretty clear that they were referring specifically to "militant secularists" in Burma, and the author went so far as to call themselves "irreligious".
The power demonstrated by those monks comes from the human spirit, and to attribute it to some sort of spiritual being cheapens the feat of people like this. They stand up to the Junta because of their unwavering belief in democracy and a free society, not because they think some spiritual being told them to or they're going to be rewarded in the afterlife.
If anything, it demonstrates that humanity doesn't need Gods like that of Christianity or Islam to give humanity strength, all we need to do is be cool to one another. :)
You're using a peaceful protest by a group of Buddhist monks to argue that "religion makes it so much easier to find support for hate, to separate people"?
:wtf:
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I might be saying an outright lie, isn't buddhism an atheistic religion?
Mefustae just mentioned gods, not religions so...
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No, that's an exact quote from Mefustae. If you don't believe me you can view it here (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php/topic,50283.msg1016408.html#msg1016408).
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Einstein kept trying to prove that the universe was deterministic because he believed it was against an increasing amount of evidence that is wasn't. And the reason he believed that is because he thought that God wouldn't do something like that. In other words he followed his faith rather than the scientific method.
By your own interpretation of the situation, it wasn't Einstein's faith that was responsible.
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The author was pretty clear that they were referring specifically to "militant secularists" in Burma, and the author went so far as to call themselves "irreligious".
If you look closely at the article:
It's very moving. But more than that, it is food for thought. This - these monks staring down the guns - presents a problem for a militant secularist in the Dawkins or Hitchens mould. I don't mean that it has any bearing on the argument about whether there is or is not a God. Buddhist monks don't worship anything resembling the God on whom the Dawkins guns are trained in any case; and the fact that they stare down the guns doesn't make a difference to whether or not what they believe is true.
My question is: Why even mention Dawkins and Hitchens? It just seems unnecessary and, IMO, kinda inflammatory (to a small degree) that he'd mention them. The writer himself mentions that the Monks in question have absolutely nothing to do with Dawkins, and yet he still brings him up to try to quantify the motives of the "militant secularists".
Personally, I just feel it was an unnecessary reference that could have been written a more fitting and less inflammatory way. Just IMO, at any rate.
You're using a peaceful protest by a group of Buddhist monks to argue that "religion makes it so much easier to find support for hate, to separate people"?
:wtf:
I argued nothing of the kind.
Forgive me for asking, but why are you quoting me out of context from a post made 2 pages (and almost a full week) ago? I don't really understand why you've gotten a statement from another discussion and applied it to a completely unrelated post.
Anyway, in that post I was attempting to demonstrate to Jr2 that religion is a major factor in people hating each other. Religion does separate people, and it's this separation that provides ammunition for assholes who spread hate and fear by exploiting the differences between people, ala skin color, sexuality, etc. In the context of the discussion, in which Jr2 claimed that a lack of religion would make no difference to society, I disagreed in that it would remove a bloody thick barrier between cultures and take the wind out of the gasbags who use religion as a way to propagate hate.
So, would you kindly pick a topic to discuss so that we don't have any further misunderstandings? :)
See that was all I was looking for, some type of response :yes2::nod::yes:
Happy to oblige. Care to weigh in on my response?
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My question is: Why even mention Dawkins and Hitchens? It just seems unnecessary and, IMO, kinda inflammatory (to a small degree) that he'd mention them. The writer himself mentions that the Monks in question have absolutely nothing to do with Dawkins, and yet he still brings him up to try to quantify the motives of the "militant secularists".
Personally, I just feel it was an unnecessary reference that could have been written a more fitting and less inflammatory way. Just IMO, at any rate.
Ahh, maybe so, then. My take on that was that the author was merely shaping what he said to avoid obvious criticisms/nitpicking. But yeah, he didn't need the references to make his point.
You're using a peaceful protest by a group of Buddhist monks to argue that "religion makes it so much easier to find support for hate, to separate people"?
:wtf:
I argued nothing of the kind.
Forgive me for asking, but why are you quoting me out of context from a post made 2 pages (and almost a full week) ago? I don't really understand why you've gotten a statement from another discussion and applied it to a completely unrelated post.
Because it's an extremely generalized and open-ended statement that was the first comment in this thread (which was split from the other discussion) which expressed your stance on the topic and wasn't a specific rebuttal to another person's point. It was taken "out of context", yes, but the rest of that post deals specifically with people forming groups based on religion for a specific purpose. The main difference between the groups described in your post is that, in one case, you disagree with the group's action, and in this case, you (would seem to) agree with the group's action.
I find one thing in common with you and Karajorma's argument; when there are bad consequences, you are quick to blame religion and disregard people's free choice in the matter. But when something positive stems from religion, you try to attribute the credit elsewhere.
I'd also feel a little disrespected if somebody thought that they could tell what my inner motivations for doing something was just because they'd read a short news article on the subject. (This also being a biased, heavily interpretive news article - really more of an opinion piece than a factual summary)
Anyway, in that post I was attempting to demonstrate to Jr2 that religion is a major factor in people hating each other. Religion does separate people, and it's this separation that provides ammunition for assholes who spread hate and fear by exploiting the differences between people, ala skin color, sexuality, etc. In the context of the discussion, in which Jr2 claimed that a lack of religion would make no difference to society, I disagreed in that it would remove a bloody thick barrier between cultures and take the wind out of the gasbags who use religion as a way to propagate hate.
So, would you kindly pick a topic to discuss so that we don't have any further misunderstandings? :)
Religious ideas separate people just as much as they unite them, and the choice of which it is is largely up to the people that make up those religions.
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Einstein kept trying to prove that the universe was deterministic because he believed it was against an increasing amount of evidence that is wasn't. And the reason he believed that is because he thought that God wouldn't do something like that. In other words he followed his faith rather than the scientific method.
By your own interpretation of the situation, it wasn't Einstein's faith that was responsible.
:wtf:
I have no clue where you're getting that from.
I find one thing in common with you and Karajorma's argument; when there are bad consequences, you are quick to blame religion and disregard people's free choice in the matter. But when something positive stems from religion, you try to attribute the credit elsewhere.
Incorrect. I've said plenty of times that I'm on the fence on this one cause religion does have lots of positive effects too and it's a question of whether the good ones balance out the bad ones.
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:wtf:
I have no clue where you're getting that from.
Einstein's religion wasn't that he had some special insight into the mind of God that nobody else did. "The Universe is deterministic" does not mean that anybody can completely understand the underlying physics of the way the universe works. No religious leader of a popular religion would say that you could understand all of God's creation with science. None of the popular religions state that, either. Einstein's religion was something that he largely chose, and something that is not unlike atheism when compared to the likes of Judaism. It does not feature any religious authority figures or holy texts that offer statements from God of what the world is and how people should behave and what they should think.
At any point, Einstein was more than free to say that his faith was wrong rather than science. But even if you decide to take personal responsibility for his own choice of religion out of Einstein's hands, you still have that nagging jump from "the universe has order" to "and that order is knowable to beings that inhabit the universe."
EDIT: Oh, and I think you do take personal responsibility for your choice of religion, within reason.
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So wait a second, you brought Einstein into this to counter colecampbell666 comments about the low value of religion. You put him next to Martin Luther King Jr and Ghandi.
And now you're claiming (and I do agree) that his religion was basically his own personal belief, not strongly connected with Judaism and basically close to atheism (and for that matter agnosticism).
Surely that brings us back to my original comment that he's a really bad example then?
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I didn't bring them up to argue that religion has a high or low value, I brought up MLK, Gandhi, and Einstein to dispute the generalization that religion "does things" to people. All three are still seen as positive figures today for their contributions to humanity. It's not uncommon to see quotes by Einstein on physics or just success in general around the physics departments at colleges.
Einstein is a bad example, but not for the reasons you were arguing.
Einstein is a bad example because in order to (dis)prove the effects that his religion had on him, you're going to have to go into historic, psychological, and quantum physics data. Basically you have to argue that (A) Einstein's arguments against Quantum Mechanics were worthless/irrational, and had no value to future study into the subject, (B) his irrationality was caused by his religious ideas, and (C) his previous successes were not caused by his religion. I'm not going to do the research required to argue at that level of depth, and I daresay that nobody else on this forum is prepared to either. (Someone who did that level of research on the subject would probably be more interested in publishing a book)
And of course once you did all that, as you've pointed out, someone could argue that Einstein's "religion" is closer to a scientific hypothesis of reality. Then start to argue that rejection of mainstream religion actually leads to irrationality. :D
Of course it's also possible that someone might find that Einstein's early belief in religion did motivate him to his early successes; but then as he grew older, it became a sort of hideaway for him to pretend that QM was not real. I would not consider that as disputing my point, because I do believe that either atheism or religion can have mixed pros and cons.
But at any rate, I do believe that Einstein was not like Benny Hinn, and did hold some kind of belief that was unprovable through scientific means, and has continued to serve as a positive symbol for generations since...that's good enough for me.
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Well, um... getting back to our main topic...
Religion separates people. This is true. But how many other things separate people? Money. Race. Values. Place of birth. These are all differences that separate people from each other. If somebody is willing to kill someone else over something as petty as a difference in religion, then they will be willing to kill someone over something else, if religion is taken away. Few, if any, actually kill people because God told them so. They kill people because they are different. They kill people because they have an honest belief that the other person is something to be hated. Religion can cause this. But so can a multitude of other things.
If you waved a magic wand, and made religion disappear from the world, you would not remove the root cause of faith-motivated violence. That root cause is the warped values of those who perpetrate such violence. For some reason, there are people on this earth that you and I share who value the lives of others less than their own personal beliefs. Religion is used as a motivator by these people, and it gives them a "cause" for which to kill. If there was no religion, you would still have people who are willing to kill. And then you would have hate crimes, and gang wars. More of them than there are now.
And do you know what? When you get down to it, religion is just philosophy. If you remove religion from the world, do you also remove all philosophy? Or do you just remove all philosophy that involves a deity? Better to remove all philosophy, isn't it? Because people will be willing to kill over that, once you magically ban deities. I mean, what's to stop me from creating a movement of my own, with a vast following of people who hate other people, where I preach that others are unworthy of life, because of whatever reason? The Nazis weren't following a religion. They held a philosophy.
So, what then? No philosophy? We can't think? We can't form a system of beliefs about the world and how we should live our lives? You want us to be zombies? Well? If you want free will, you have to take everything that comes along with it. Remember what the Supreme Being had to say about the existence of evil, in Time Bandits: "Ah... I think it's something to do with free will."
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Frankly I agree. People will find other things to fight about besides religion.
What really is a double-edged sword about the human race is being passionate about things. On one end, you can see extreme passion turning religion into bigotry, politics into corrupt government, patriotism into nationalism... It can do some really horrible things when people are led to believe certain tenants of religion by corrupt demagogues; hence why I dislike organized religion in general. People like Fred Phelps and various insane Muslim sheiks in the Middle East are my prime examples...
However, on the other hand, passion can also turn religion into charity (Lutheran World Relief being an excellent example), politics into a driving force for the protection of people's rights, and patriotism into protecting one's country even from inside forces.
Unfortunately, we see a lot more of the former into today's world.
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I have stayed away from this argument. I may join it. Either way, I do believe religion for its own sake is a pointless folly and is among the highest forms of wasted time known to man.
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Einstein is a bad example, but not for the reasons you were arguing.
As long as you agree that he is a bad example I can't be bothered to dispute why. :)
And do you know what? When you get down to it, religion is just philosophy. If you remove religion from the world, do you also remove all philosophy? Or do you just remove all philosophy that involves a deity? Better to remove all philosophy, isn't it? Because people will be willing to kill over that, once you magically ban deities. I mean, what's to stop me from creating a movement of my own, with a vast following of people who hate other people, where I preach that others are unworthy of life, because of whatever reason? The Nazis weren't following a religion. They held a philosophy.
While I agree with you for the most part there is one very large difference between religion (at least the ones with deities) and other philosophies. And that is the presence of an ultimate authority who can't be questioned. With any other philosophy you can take it apart and show that it is incorrect if it is being used for violent purposes.
You brought up the Nazis as an example of an ideology. But look at Germany 5 or 10 years later, were there still large numbers of Nazis? Or did they quickly convert back to a more rational philosophy once they were faced with the horrors of what they had done?
Do you honestly think that there would have been such a complete conversion had the Nazis been religiously motivated? Or would they have continued to believe that it was God's plan for them to be the master race?
So I'm still on the fence about whether removing religion would make the world better. But I don't think we should say that religion is just the same as any other philosophy. It has a lot more power to resist change than other philosophies.
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1 word: Prozium
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While I agree with you for the most part there is one very large difference between religion (at least the ones with deities) and other philosophies. And that is the presence of an ultimate authority who can't be questioned. With any other philosophy you can take it apart and show that it is incorrect if it is being used for violent purposes.
Go back to 1940 and try to convince Hitler and Goring of that.. :lol:
You brought up the Nazis as an example of an ideology. But look at Germany 5 or 10 years later, were there still large numbers of Nazis? Or did they quickly convert back to a more rational philosophy once they were faced with the horrors of what they had done?
Do you honestly think that there would have been such a complete conversion had the Nazis been religiously motivated? Or would they have continued to believe that it was God's plan for them to be the master race?
What would happen if they won? Who knows.
The driving force of philosophy like that (nacism) is hate..and strong belief in ones superiority.
Religions are generally about love.
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While I agree with you for the most part there is one very large difference between religion (at least the ones with deities) and other philosophies. And that is the presence of an ultimate authority who can't be questioned. With any other philosophy you can take it apart and show that it is incorrect if it is being used for violent purposes.
Go back to 1940 and try to convince Hitler and Goring of that.. :lol:
You brought up the Nazis as an example of an ideology. But look at Germany 5 or 10 years later, were there still large numbers of Nazis? Or did they quickly convert back to a more rational philosophy once they were faced with the horrors of what they had done?
Do you honestly think that there would have been such a complete conversion had the Nazis been religiously motivated? Or would they have continued to believe that it was God's plan for them to be the master race?
What would happen if they won? Who knows.
The driving force of philosophy like that (nacism) is hate..and strong belief in ones superiority.
Religions are generally about love.
Interesting, and while Godwins law stalks it's prey in the shadows here let me point something out:
Consider the "Fuhrer Cult" or Cult of the Fuhrer - essentially a cult built up around Hitler that had very little to do with ideology and everything to do with religious fervour. People who had grown up knowing nothing but him soon began to think of him as a divine being (albeit not in such terms). He became a Pope, an Imam, a spiritual leader who could give people hope and leadership - and provide answers when others could not. In effect, Nazi Germany was host to a religion that started with a lie, and ended with mass slaughter.
That being said the reason why the majority of the German population soon lost faith in Hitler was because he betrayed them, and failed them. He killed himself, and he failed to provide them with the glorious future he had promised. Of course they lost faith. No religion so young could possibly survive such a trauma.
And one other thing - as far as it's founders and followers were concerned, Nazism was about love - love of their country, their "race", and of their human saviour. They believed Hitler loved them - like a parent and a child. Hence why the end was so unthinkable to them, and why they were suddenly jolted out of their faith based daze when it all came crashing down.
There's a saying I've liked for a long time: The difference between a cult and a religion is the number of followers.
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While I agree with you for the most part there is one very large difference between religion (at least the ones with deities) and other philosophies. And that is the presence of an ultimate authority who can't be questioned. With any other philosophy you can take it apart and show that it is incorrect if it is being used for violent purposes.
Go back to 1940 and try to convince Hitler and Goring of that.. :lol:
I didn't say it was easy. I said it was possible.
What would happen if they won? Who knows.
Who cares? What does it have to do with the matter at hand?
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What would happen if they won? Who knows.
Who cares? What does it have to do with the matter at hand?
It's standard operating procedure to bring up the obligatory "what if the Nazis had won?" query when someone starts talking about Hitler. Duh! :p
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Consider the "Fuhrer Cult" or Cult of the Fuhrer - essentially a cult built up around Hitler that had very little to do with ideology and everything to do with religious fervour. People who had grown up knowing nothing but him soon began to think of him as a divine being (albeit not in such terms). He became a Pope, an Imam, a spiritual leader who could give people hope and leadership - and provide answers when others could not. In effect, Nazi Germany was host to a religion that started with a lie, and ended with mass slaughter.
That being said the reason why the majority of the German population soon lost faith in Hitler was because he betrayed them, and failed them. He killed himself, and he failed to provide them with the glorious future he had promised. Of course they lost faith. No religion so young could possibly survive such a trauma.
And one other thing - as far as it's founders and followers were concerned, Nazism was about love - love of their country, their "race", and of their human saviour. They believed Hitler loved them - like a parent and a child. Hence why the end was so unthinkable to them, and why they were suddenly jolted out of their faith based daze when it all came crashing down.
Natzism isn't a religion. Alltough you can have "faith" in people and their propaganda, but it's not the same. By that logic every single popular philosophy is actuallya religion...heck ATHEISM is a religion then.
There's a saying I've liked for a long time: The difference between a cult and a religion is the number of followers.
And in allosst everything else... if they are the same to you than all I can say is that you're blind or aren't looking hard enough.
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And in allosst everything else... if they are the same to you than all I can say is that you're blind or aren't looking hard enough.
Vyper was polite enough to state a logical reason why they're the same, how about providing a logical counterargument about why they're different?
Regardless, just look it up in a dictionary. Cults are only differentiated from major religions by the size of the support base. Ignore the modern stigma around the word and look at the facts. Jeez. :rolleyes:
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And in allosst everything else... if they are the same to you than all I can say is that you're blind or aren't looking hard enough.
Christianity was a cult at Jesus' time so it's evident you don't know what the word means.
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Ah, yes, it's always fun to pretend we don't know which definition of a word is being referred to, isn't it?
# S: (n) cult (followers of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices)
# S: (n) fad, craze, furor, furore, cult, rage (an interest followed with exaggerated zeal) "he always follows the latest fads"; "it was all the rage that season"
# S: (n) cult (followers of an unorthodox, extremist, or false religion or sect who often live outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader)
# S: (n) cult (a religion or sect that is generally considered to be unorthodox, extremist, or false) "it was a satanic cult"
# S: (n) cult, cultus, religious cult (a system of religious beliefs and rituals) "devoted to the cultus of the Blessed Virgin"
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Hitler's problem, IMO, was a lack of "apostles" if you will; for a couple of years after the end of WWII faith and belief in him still ran high in Germany. (Lots of people, for example, initially caught the blame in German eyes for the Holocaust. Hitler wasn't one of them; there are numerous accounts by US soldiers after the war of German civilians defending him by saying he must have known nothing of it.) However all the true believers commited suicide along with him, or were locked up for years, and the time for entrenchment of National Socialist ideas was lost.
Though it is also quite arguable that Naziism was a "cult of personality" to use the Soviet term, and it derived all its real strength among the people from just that: Hitler's personality. That was his strength, the inflexible and dominating will that enthralled everyone around him. Without it, the system began to crumble; and the signs showed well before he died.
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Ah, yes, it's always fun to pretend we don't know which definition of a word is being referred to, isn't it?
# S: (n) cult (followers of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices)
# S: (n) fad, craze, furor, furore, cult, rage (an interest followed with exaggerated zeal) "he always follows the latest fads"; "it was all the rage that season"
# S: (n) cult (followers of an unorthodox, extremist, or false religion or sect who often live outside of conventional society under the direction of a charismatic leader)
# S: (n) cult (a religion or sect that is generally considered to be unorthodox, extremist, or false) "it was a satanic cult"
# S: (n) cult, cultus, religious cult (a system of religious beliefs and rituals) "devoted to the cultus of the Blessed Virgin"
One of the definitions above:
S: (n) cult (followers of an exclusive system of religious beliefs and practices)
"Exclusive" seems to imply the size of the believer base.
Ed
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Atheism is also a cult then.
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There are no religious beliefs involved in atheism. That's what the term means. On top of which there are lots of followers which would make it a religion even if we believed the nonsense you were spouting.
As for early Christianity when you have 12 followers and one man who says he's the son of God what the **** is it if not a cult?
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@Kara - The Manson Family?
Religion is Faith-based, Atheism is Evidence-based, I suppose you could theoretically say that Atheism is a Cult based on their faith that
God does not exist, however, I think that would be stretching the term a little.
If Atheism has an identifier, I suppose you could call it a 'Group' or a 'Club' :)
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@Kara - The Manson Family?
:lol:
Somehow I think that Trashman would have even more of a problem with that definition. :p
Religion is Faith-based, Atheism is Evidence-based, I suppose you could theoretically say that Atheism is a Cult based on their faith that God does not exist, however, I think that would be stretching the term a little.
Strong atheism starts with the fact that gods are a logical impossibility and therefore can't exist. That's not a faith based position and you'd be hugely stretching the point to claim that it was as you say.
Weak atheism says that there's simply no proof of gods and therefore you might as well act like they don't exist until proof is found.
Absolutely no faith involved there at all. To claim that there is faith involved is not even stretching the point. It's a complete misunderstanding of what weak atheism is.
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I suppose that Faith is really another face of Hope, it's not identical, but very few individuals have done something in the faith that something bad would happen to them for doing it.
Most Religion is based on the idea of a reward after you die, or a punishment, Atheism believes neither, so cannot really be counted a Religious belief.
I suppose what is so blood chillingly terrifying is not Religion itself, it's the possiblities it represents. Whatever happens after you die is, according to the Church, eternal, and it is also they who dictate what God thinks, and where the up and down buttons are in the lift. Gods thoughts may be pure, but you can be damn certain that not every person who has dictated Church, and therefore Gods, policies over the years has been. Personally, I think as far as eternity is concerned, I'd rather trust myself than a man in a funny hat.
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Strange...there are many cults that don't have any real religion bases (like, the cult that believes we were created by aliens and they will come to teach us transcendence)..or at least they have been called cults.
Either the definiton of cult needs changing or a lot of people don't know what the heck it means.
Does the cult have to involve some diety or is some common philosophy enough? But by that definition everything would be a cult.. pfft..look at us..arguing semantics.
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Strange...there are many cults that don't have any real religion bases (like, the cult that believes we were created by aliens and they will come to teach us transcendence)..or at least they have been called cults.
That's simply religion by another name really though. Instead of a faith in divine beings the faith is in super-intelligent aliens instead.
It's pretty obvious that the original comment mentioning cults was about religious cults anyway.
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I'm curious about what you consider a real "religious base" to be Trashman.
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Does the cult have to involve some diety or is some common philosophy enough? But by that definition everything would be a cult.. pfft..look at us..arguing semantics.
Heh, you're the only one arguing semantics mate! :p
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Atheism is also a cult then.
Based on which definition?
I suppose that Faith is really another face of Hope, it's not identical, but very few individuals have done something in the faith that something bad would happen to them for doing it.
Faith is different to hope in that faith is believing something you hope to be true, while hope is merely wanting it to be true or to come true. Evidence is irrelevant to faith.
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Trashman wishing on a star.
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There are no religious beliefs involved in atheism. That's what the term means. On top of which there are lots of followers which would make it a religion even if we believed the nonsense you were spouting.
As for early Christianity when you have 12 followers and one man who says he's the son of God what the **** is it if not a cult?
Eh, let's see... the fact that He proved it.
OK, and, let's define a theism - the belief, or faith, that there is not God.
# S: (n) religion, faith, religious belief (a strong belief in a supernatural power or powers that control human destiny) "he lost his faith but not his morality"
So, it's sort of an a-religion, just like -1 is still a number.
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Eh, let's see... the fact that He proved it.
So proof is required? So Hinduism is also proved then?
And besides Jesus didn't prove it until the marriage at Cana which if I recall was after he had assembled his disciples.
OK, and, let's define a theism - the belief, or faith, that there is not God.
Let's not cause it's a load of bollocks.
Atheism is a lack of faith. To define it as a faith that there isn't a God is a strawman. It's not a belief at all. It's not like -1 it's more like NaN.
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What do you mean, atheism isn't a faith? It isn't a belief??? OK, then what is it? A theory? No. I do suppose it should be allowed that atheism isn't a religious faith, but it is a faith nonetheless, and the fervor of atheists matches or exceeds those of the religious.
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You cannot have a religion that has a doctrine of 'There is no Religion', it might work with Spoons in the Matrix, but doesn't work with Churches. You cannot have a 'Church of Atheism', it would be an oxymoron.
Atheism is more of a Society than a Cult, and, as was mentioned earlier, don't get confused between the 'TV' presentation of cults and the reality of them, they don't go around drinking goats blood or committing ritual suicide, at least, apart from a few tragic cases. Strictly speaking the Scouts is a Cult, it is religion based, accepts from a select demographic and has specific, self-based rituals. That doesn't make the Scouts evil, it just makes them the Scouts.
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What do you mean, atheism isn't a faith? It isn't a belief??? OK, then what is it? A theory? No. I do suppose it should be allowed that atheism isn't a religious faith, but it is a faith nonetheless, and the fervor of atheists matches or exceeds those of the religious.
Sorry but you're wrong again.
Faith is the belief in something despite a lack of evidence. Atheism is the very antithesis of this point of view. Atheism says don't have faith in anything, act upon only that which there is evidence for.
Let me put it this way. Do you have faith you aren't a Martian? Or is it simply that the evidence you are one is non-existent while the evidence you are Terran is plentiful?
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Atheism, by definition, is not a religion. But great many "atheists" fail to implement it according to the definition, the result being something that is based mostly on faith (unconsciously).
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Clarify that please.
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I think he means that a lot of Atheists are closet Spiritualists, which is probably pretty accurate, for some reason, a lot of people I meet seem to think that Atheist simply means 'Not belonging to a major religion'.
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Religion rules. I am now religious. I have an "I love jesus" bumper sticker for my car, and I hate homosexuals. I am also a troll.
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Trolls can't regenerate flame damage.....
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I am wearing "don't give a ****" plated armour. Which gives me +10 flame resistance but with a penalty of -10 for giving a ****.
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:lol:
I would respond with yet more Warhammer references, but then I'd be spamming the thread too :nervous:
Back on Topic, someone asked about Scientology earlier, I think you'll find that it IS a religion because it relies on Faith for the stuff about Xenu, there's no evidence, so it's a Religion.
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What do you mean, atheism isn't a faith? It isn't a belief??? OK, then what is it? A theory? No. I do suppose it should be allowed that atheism isn't a religious faith, but it is a faith nonetheless, and the fervor of atheists matches or exceeds those of the religious.
Im pretty sure I explained this to you last time but atheism doesnt require faith because we have no objective reason to believe in gods. It requires faith. Because faith is believing in something even if there is no evidence or even when theres evidence to the contrary, becuase with faith evidence is irrelevant. Atheism OTOH requires no faith.
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I think he means that a lot of Atheists are closet Spiritualists, which is probably pretty accurate, for some reason, a lot of people I meet seem to think that Atheist simply means 'Not belonging to a major religion'.
Then they really need to be educated as to what the term means as they are more agnostic or deist than atheistic.
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Agreed, I consider myself to be more Spiritual than anything else, but if I were brutally honest, I'd say it's more a question of 'hope' than 'belief', so that starts edging towards faith. I tend to subscribe to, of all things, a Star Trek quote, 'Infinite possibilities in an Infinite Universe'. I quite like the context of that, it means there's always something new to learn, and somewhere new to go.
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Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations.
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Either way, 'There's room enough for everything' :p
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I AM THE SON OF SAM!!
Religion is a wonderful thing...
Edit: Stupid keyboard...
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Either way, 'There's room enough for everything' :p
Hey if you're going to geek out around me you do it right. ;)
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Strong atheism starts with the fact that gods are a logical impossibility and therefore can't exist. That's not a faith based position and you'd be hugely stretching the point to claim that it was as you say.
That's not quite true.
Denial of the existence of God based on logic and scientific evidence requires faith in the processes of logic and science - i.e. we believe they produce "true" knowledge.
But what is true? (/postmodernism).
It is entirely plausible that unrecognized errors in processes of science and logical reasoning have led to an inability of science and/or logic to detect the existence of a God or other deities. We take it on a form of faith that logic and science produce rational conclusions because we have no evidence that they produce irrational conclusions, rather than having evidence that suggests they must always produce rational conclusions.
Wow, that was convoluted.
At any rate, a serious scientist must always admit that there is error involved in measurement and the evidence produced from it, stemming either from failinings in experiment design and analysis, or inabilities of man to fully comprehend the results.
In essence, science and logic are forms of evidence-based faith, but they do require some element of acceptance based on belief at their very basic level.
This is precisely why religion and science are actually two disparate forms of the same-knowledge producing structure. Both purport to produce true explanations of the world around us. Religion, as the oldest, has been co-opted into human power struggles and solidified into doctrine rather than being interpreted as what it really is - people at a particular point in time and human understanding describing their world in terms that made sense to them at the time. Science, as the younger of the two, is based on an anti-religious prespective which is perpetually skeptical and is always questioning, improving upon itself. However, Enlightenment science based on rationality is barely 400 years old and we are already seeing it begin the transition into doctrine, where some of its elements can no longer be legitimately questioned.
Science and religion are period-specific means of making sense of our world. Religion has been adapted into power structures in order to serve the needs of elite groups of individuals, and thus has entered doctrine. The result is that many religions believe they can no longer be questioned and its understanding of the world is formalized. Science, by contrast, has been adopted by elites but is based on a continued expansion of knowledge and thus perpetually questions and changes certain elements of itself while the core belief structure remains the same.
Science and religion are two halves of the same whole, and they both require some element of faith. Even the most stringent atheist must have some form of faith or they would agnostic, recognizing that we really don't know either way when it comes to higher powers than ourselves.
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In essence, science and logic are forms of evidence-based faith, but they do require some element of acceptance based on belief at their very basic level.
This is precisely why religion and science are actually two disparate forms of the same-knowledge producing structure.
This I dont agree with. When has assuming a supernatural explanation for anything ever verifiably increased our understanding? Since there are no examples to be found, how can you say science and religion are just different forms of the "same" knowledge producing structure?
Science doesnt require any faith at all, it simply requires the acceptance that its the only thing that can produce results and the scientific method being the best and only method we know of that can increase our knowledge. You say religion can increase our knowledge, so how does it do that?
You are right to say that Science may be wrong about everything. Maybe we are all in the Matrix or apart of Zen dream but we havent any reason to believe that and believing in these things doesnt help explain anything. So it doesnt require faith to disbelieve we are in the Matrix just because we have no reason to think we are.
Religion is based on faith, which is believing something regardless of any evidence there may or may not be to support it. Its believing when there is no evidence at all or when there is evidence to the contrary - evidence is irrelevant to faith. Having faith can never increase your understanding but its a very good way to stay wrong forever and never know it.
Science, as the younger of the two, is based on an anti-religious prespective which is perpetually skeptical and is always questioning, improving upon itself. However, Enlightenment science based on rationality is barely 400 years old and we are already seeing it begin the transition into doctrine, where some of its elements can no longer be legitimately questioned.
Whats wrong with science being perpetually skeptical, always questioning and improving upon itself? Which elements can longer be legitimately questioned? Is that because they are so well evidenced you need a lot of evidence to overthrow it?
Science and religion are two halves of the same whole, and they both require some element of faith. Even the most stringent atheist must have some form of faith or they would agnostic, recognizing that we really don't know either way when it comes to higher powers than ourselves.
An agnostic believes its either impossible to know if god exists or that they dont know if one does or not. I say Im atheist because Im not on the fence, I really dont believe there is a god. But I dont because I see no reason to believe in one. That doesnt require any faith at all. I also dont believe in the supernatural, even though I hope there is and would love to believe in it. The problem is I see very little objective reason to, hence my disbelief in the supernatural also has no element of faith involved. To take it further I see no evidence for Santa Claus, Odin or the Flying Spaghetti Monster and you will likely agree with me, but our mutual disbelief in these dont require faith either.
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At any rate, a serious scientist must always admit that there is error involved in measurement and the evidence produced from it, stemming either from failinings in experiment design and analysis, or inabilities of man to fully comprehend the results.
Exactly. And that goes not only for the scientist, but for anyone claiming to be a serious atheist. A failure in realizing and practicing that point renders the "atheist" just another believer. Furthermore, this requirement must be extended to cover also the internal world, i.e. every sensation and thought that ever passes the consciousness of the mind.
(I guess this means there are not real "truths" to be known either, just series of infinite regression, at best :doubt:).
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Religion would be better without the world.
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Strong atheism starts with the fact that gods are a logical impossibility and therefore can't exist. That's not a faith based position and you'd be hugely stretching the point to claim that it was as you say.
Thing about an afterlife / something more is there is no way to logically or scientifically disprove it, just as there is no way to prove it. Religion, at its most basic level, is permanently safe. By being atheist it requires faith, because you can't disprove anything, by believing anything it requires faith. Believing that anything is real requires a certain degree of faith.
Religion would be better without the world.
:nod:
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This I dont agree with. When has assuming a supernatural explanation for anything ever verifiably increased our understanding? Since there are no examples to be found, how can you say science and religion are just different forms of the "same" knowledge producing structure?
Science doesnt require any faith at all, it simply requires the acceptance that its the only thing that can produce results and the scientific method being the best and only method we know of that can increase our knowledge. You say religion can increase our knowledge, so how does it do that?
What is acceptance but faith that what you hear is true?
Think about it for a second. It's easy for simple things like gravity - things you can in a way test yourself. but you readily belive practicly anything your read from scientific magazines, new theories and truths that you cannot really test. I mean, you don't have a giant particle accelerator in your back yard to test out the latest teories on subatomic particels, dimensions and quantum mechanics.
So in essence you're taking someone elses WORD, since you havn't made those experiments yourself.
What you say? But it's been confirmed by a 100000 scientists? So? There are millilons of christians and Musluims and budhists out there who claim there is a God/higer state of mind/whatever. Does that make them right?
So yes, there is a certain level of belief in science - belief that what those scientist say is true, belief that their data is correct, etc.
At the end of the day, more or less everything is belief.
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And that goes not only for the scientist, but for anyone claiming to be a serious atheist. A failure in realizing and practicing that point renders the "atheist" just another believer. Furthermore, this requirement must be extended to cover also the internal world, i.e. every sensation and thought that ever passes the consciousness of the mind.
(I guess this means there are not real "truths" to be known either, just series of infinite regression, at best :doubt:).
What people who make that argument fail to comprehend is that it's completely irrelevant to the matter at hand anyway. It simply doesn't matter that the world might not be what we think it is. It doesn't matter that we might all be in the matrix or something.
Whether you are religious or an atheist we all still act on our perception of the world. The baseline is the exact same point for everyone. And everyone believes in cause and effect to some degree. Everyone believes in logic to some degree. People who don't are labelled insane and stuck in an asylum to prevent them from hurting themselves.
Everyone believes in the scientific method and the rules of logic at a certain basic level. No matter how religious someone is they don't get out of bed expecting gravity not to work or their orange juice to be a gas. Why do they expect that? It's cause they know from experience that you don't suddenly start floating without a good reason and that orange juice is a liquid.
Religious people have made the same basic assumptions about validity logic and experimentation. It's just that at some point they then abandon this and start taking things as true without evidence or experience.
So yes you can try to throw the philosophical equivalent of the nuke into a thread on religion by claiming that since perception is subjective everything requires faith at some level but it's a rather pointless argument to make. It's as pointless as a physicist claiming that you can't do any kind of energy calculation using Newton's laws unless you include zero point energy on both sides of the equation. Technically he's correct. In practical terms he's a know it all wanker who's just showing off.
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What is acceptance but faith that what you hear is true?
That would be the fallacy of believing something just because someone told you. Thats religion. Arguments from authority are worthless in science unless you have the evidence to back yourself up.
Think about it for a second. It's easy for simple things like gravity - things you can in a way test yourself. but you readily belive practicly anything your read from scientific magazines, new theories and truths that you cannot really test.
Firstly, dropping something like an apple is hardly testing the theory of gravity. You need to get a little more educated about what the theory of gravity is if thats all you think you need to to prove it. Its a lot more in depth than that.
Secondly, science needs to be repeatable. If you wanted to you could go and test everything you read in science magazines and scientists do this all the time. Just because the common man doesnt have the knowledge or the equipment doesnt mean it cant be done. Religious claims cant even hypothetically be tested, because if you could you wouldnt need faith to believe it anymore.
I mean, you don't have a giant particle accelerator in your back yard to test out the latest teories on subatomic particels, dimensions and quantum mechanics.
So in essence you're taking someone elses WORD, since you havn't made those experiments yourself.
Just because I believe something doesnt mean its absolute. Everything I believe is tentative and subject to change when the evidence demands. Im not an expert in many fields, but I appreciate many people are. Baring any reason to disbelieve them I can accept their position as tentaively true open to the possibility that they are wrong, only because I have no understanding it of myself. Religious belivers like yourself cant seem to understand this, as everything in your world is very black and white seeing the world in absolutes. But thats what faith does to you.
What you say? But it's been confirmed by a 100000 scientists? So? There are millilons of christians and Musluims and budhists out there who claim there is a God/higer state of mind/whatever. Does that make them right?
So yes, there is a certain level of belief in science - belief that what those scientist say is true, belief that their data is correct, etc.
If its been confirmed by 1000 scientists (though thats not actually very many so lets just pretend you mean the majority of scientists) then I would think that there must be a reason they all agree. And if I wanted to I could find out WHY they agree. I could read the peer reviewed literature, review and even repeat whatever experiments that were conducted to see if I can find flaws. I can submit my own papers for review and if its a well established consensus I have challenged, and Im right about it, I will gain much prestige.
Religion on the other hand has a lot of believers, but if I wanted to know WHY they believed all I would get directed to is their holy texts and subjective feelings. No objective evidence, no experiments to review or repeat to verify any of the claims they make, no way to validate anything.
Thats the difference between science and religion, religion is based on faith while science is based on evidence. The very nature of science is that it is self correcting and demands that it changes when the evidence demands it, while religion is stuck because faith demands it never question its primary dogmas. Religion cannot possibly therefore verifiably increase our knowledge and so is practically useless in improving our understanding of anything.
At the end of the day, more or less everything is belief.
Everyone has beliefs, but belief doesnt necessarily equal faith. Faith is believing in something where evidence is irrelevant.
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Out of curiousity, people DO know that you can believe in God without subscribing to any single religion, correct? I think that this needs to be cleared up by making ignorant assumptions that only religious people believe in God, i.e. you can be a spiritual person that believes in God and have your own personal understanding of Him.
As for whether the world would be a better place without religion, I seriously doubt that. I DO think that the world would be a better place if man didn't constantly go in and distort and corrupt religion and twisting it to his own ends. Religion in general seems to work more at the local and personal level, but the moment political (as in the church and government being one in the same) level has been attained, you start getting into trouble. The Founding Fathers of the USA understood this and thus excluded the creation of a national church that would force everyone into the same group (after all is this NOT the reason the Pilgrims left England?). But as a personal thing, religion can often be inspiring to some, and comforting to others. It helps to set up philosophical and ethical guidelines to help mold us into better people.
And in general, I think that most religions ARE charitable in that they help the needy and poor.
Here's another idea though, let's throw the flip side of the question which would be "Would the World be a Better Place without Atheism?"
Sure state-sponsored atheism has never really existed until the 20th Century (at least to my limited knowledge), but let's see what fond chapters of human history that the anti-religious folk have conjured up in less than 100 years. Well, we've got the Bolshevik Revolution, the Purges, Cultural Revolution in Mao's China, slaughter of innocents in virtually every Communist Country at some point in time. And please bare in mind that something like 100,000 Million people perished in a span of less than 100 years alone which is something I don't think organized religion has accomplished in the same amount of time.
Or we can look at it this way, maybe it's not so much religion's 'fault' any more than it's atheism's 'fault' and has more to do with how human beings are simply flawed and imperfect creatures that tend to screw things up as much as do things right. :)
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And please bare in mind that something like 100,000 Million people perished in a span of less than 100 years alone which is something I don't think organized religion has accomplished in the same amount of time.
It's not something atheism has achieved either. Unless you're claiming that the Chinese travelled back in time wiping people from history. :p
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And please bare in mind that something like 100,000 Million people perished in a span of less than 100 years alone which is something I don't think organized religion has accomplished in the same amount of time.
It's not something atheism has achieved either. Unless you're claiming that the Chinese travelled back in time wiping people from history. :p
Well, this is the Chinese we're talking about here. :nervous:
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Out of curiousity, people DO know that you can believe in God without subscribing to any single religion, correct? I think that this needs to be cleared up by making ignorant assumptions that only religious people believe in God, i.e. you can be a spiritual person that believes in God and have your own personal understanding of Him.
Sure, thats Deism. Theres also Taoism and varients of that. But they all still require faith in order to believe it, unfortunatly, as I would love Taoism especially to be true.
Well, we've got the Bolshevik Revolution, the Purges, Cultural Revolution in Mao's China, slaughter of innocents in virtually every Communist Country at some point in time. And please bare in mind that something like 100,000 Million people perished in a span of less than 100 years alone which is something I don't think organized religion has accomplished in the same amount of time.
No one was killed in the name of atheism though.
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Gah, too much to quote and too little time, so I'll take the liberty of freehand to clear a few things up.
First off, science and religion are historically two halves of the same whole. Both began as knowledge-producing institutions to understand the world around us.
Religion, or organized religion, has entered into doctrine such that it can no longer be legitimately questioned or modified (and this is a bad thing). It has remained a period-specific means of understanding our world, and has not been adjusted with time (or the few adjustments that have come took some serious effort to put into place).
Science, by contrast, which really emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Enlightenment, is a rational answer to the failures of religion to accept new forms of evidence. In many ways, science is the complete opposite of religion in its perpetual skepticism and acceptance of new facts modifying its original premises. Whereas religion has entered a static and doctrinal state of affairs, science's basic premise ensures that understanding continues to be advanced. (And this is a good thing /Martha).
Where the lines begin to blur is when we look at this issue of doctrine and rigidity. Religion hasn't always been in the state its afforded in today's society. At many points in history, religion was quite fluid. It is only since the establishment of an official order of Christianity (e.g. the true establishment of the hierarchical Vatican) that any religion entered total doctrinal supervision. At that point in history, religion began to move more and more into the realm of power politics and had less and less to do with understanding the world. This is not to say religion was never used in power structures before (we can go right back to the Sumerians and see that, indeed, it was), but the role widened.
Science's very premise is on perpetual skepticism and the continued requirement for proof, not to mention knowledge for the sake of knowledge, rather than power relationships. (Yet a very bright man once said that knowledge is power, and vice versa). However, since its modern foundations in the Enlightenment, Science has also become more and more entrenched into power politics. That said, unlike religion, science has maintained most of its basic premise. Where the danger signs come into play is on acceptance of science for science's sake. Somewhere along the line, mainstream society lost their skepticism of scientific discovery, and much of it is now being accepted purely on the word of the researchers involved. The vast majority of experiments are NEVER replicated, and when they are we often get different results. It is becoming increasingly harder to modify some of the basic principles of science - we need only look at Newton's laws as an example of this (Einstein's work violated much of Newton's in its early stages, and took some time to be accepted by the scientific community at large). Science is also becoming increasingly privatized, out of the view of the layman. Instead, we depend on specialists to tell us what is true. These specialists are not affiliated with religion so for the most part we take their word on some element of faith in their principles. In addition, powerful lobby groups for science are infiltrating national power structures further and further so that science now influences government instead of religion. This wouldn't be a problem (Science's goals are rationalism and the betterment of humanity) except for the specialist understanding, or priviledged level of knowledge, which scientists as a whole do not readily afford to the layman outside their cluster.
I'm sure in some ways my historical analysis sounds very conspiracy-esque, but that is not my intention. Rather, I'm illustrating a point that we must be careful so as not to make claims about science and religion as two entirely separate phenomena, one good and one bad, but rather recognize that they are both rooted in the same historical context and have followed similar patterns of development since their inception.
To say religion is worthless while science is all knowing is to take a very specific and very naive historical story. Both have a role to play, and both are more similar in ways that a great many on both sides of the spectrum refuse to acknowledge. Ultimately, they both began as a means of knowing our world, and both have diverged from that original purpose.
At any rate, for an atheist to say they do not believe in God because of the evidence is to have faith that the means of producing those evidence are entirely truthful and unflawed, which anyone with a serious science education can tell you is a line of crap. Science is still in its infancy.
Incidentally, before anyone starts questioning me as some quack making up a line, my training is in several areas of science, including Molecular Genetics, Sociology (especially Power/Conflict sociology), and Psychology. I'm not religious, and I do not participate in any organized Faith.
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Gah, too much to quote and too little time, so I'll take the liberty of freehand to clear a few things up.
First off, science and religion are historically two halves of the same whole. Both began as knowledge-producing institutions to understand the world around us.
If an increase in knowledge is defined as a verifiable increase in understanding, then religion is not or ever was a knowledge producing institution.
Science, by contrast, which really emerged in the 17th and 18th centuries with the Enlightenment, is a rational answer to the failures of religion to accept new forms of evidence. In many ways, science is the complete opposite of religion in its perpetual skepticism and acceptance of new facts modifying its original premises. Whereas religion has entered a static and doctrinal state of affairs, science's basic premise ensures that understanding continues to be advanced. (And this is a good thing /Martha).
Glad we agree there. :)
Science's very premise is on perpetual skepticism and the continued requirement for proof, not to mention knowledge for the sake of knowledge, rather than power relationships. (Yet a very bright man once said that knowledge is power, and vice versa). However, since its modern foundations in the Enlightenment, Science has also become more and more entrenched into power politics. That said, unlike religion, science has maintained most of its basic premise. Where the danger signs come into play is on acceptance of science for science's sake. Somewhere along the line, mainstream society lost their skepticism of scientific discovery, and much of it is now being accepted purely on the word of the researchers involved. The vast majority of experiments are NEVER replicated, and when they are we often get different results. It is becoming increasingly harder to modify some of the basic principles of science - we need only look at Newton's laws as an example of this (Einstein's work violated much of Newton's in its early stages, and took some time to be accepted by the scientific community at large). Science is also becoming increasingly privatized, out of the view of the layman. Instead, we depend on specialists to tell us what is true. These specialists are not affiliated with religion so for the most part we take their word on some element of faith in their principles. In addition, powerful lobby groups for science are infiltrating national power structures further and further so that science now influences government instead of religion. This wouldn't be a problem (Science's goals are rationalism and the betterment of humanity) except for the specialist understanding, or priviledged level of knowledge, which scientists as a whole do not readily afford to the layman outside their cluster.
Like I said in my last reply to Trashman, if I wanted to I could read the peer reviewed literature, review and even repeat whatever experiments that were conducted to see if I can find flaws. I can submit my own papers for review and if its a well established consensus I have challenged, and Im right about it, I will gain much prestige.
Religion on the other hand has a lot of believers, but if I wanted to know why they believed all I would get directed to is their holy texts and subjective feelings. No objective evidence, no experiments to review or repeat to verify any of the claims they make, no way to validate anything. There are problems with PEOPLE in science, afterall they are only human, but thats not science itself.
To say religion is worthless while science is all knowing is to take a very specific and very naive historical story. Both have a role to play, and both are more similar in ways that a great many on both sides of the spectrum refuse to acknowledge. Ultimately, they both began as a means of knowing our world, and both have diverged from that original purpose.
Religion isnt dependant on evidence its dependant on faith, and faith can only be self depective because it stops you questioning your beliefs. Faith can never help you gain knowledge but it will help you stay wrong forever. So no they arent comparable. If you dont agree then you'll need to show me where assuming a supernatural explanation has ever verifiably increased in our understanding.
At any rate, for an atheist to say they do not believe in God because of the evidence is to have faith that the means of producing those evidence are entirely truthful and unflawed, which anyone with a serious science education can tell you is a line of crap.
Like I said before I am an atheist because I see no reason to believe in one. That requires no faith.
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So yes you can try to throw the philosophical equivalent of the nuke into a thread on religion by claiming that since perception is subjective everything requires faith at some level but it's a rather pointless argument to make.
If that is the ground level on top of which even the atheist must build, how is it pointless? That part of reality can be ignored without fear of ill-effects?
As I see it, the existence of that fact doesn't make an atheist a believer in any way, but ignoring it is a step in that direction.
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If an increase in knowledge is defined as a verifiable increase in understanding, then religion is not or ever was a knowledge producing institution.
Assuming God is the creator of the whole universe, than also means that without understanding him, true enlightenment/knowledge cannot be gained, no?
Like I said in my last reply to Trashman, if I wanted to I could read the peer reviewed literature, review and even repeat whatever experiments that were conducted to see if I can find flaws. I can submit my own papers for review and if its a well established consensus I have challenged, and Im right about it, I will gain much prestige.
Religion on the other hand has a lot of believers, but if I wanted to know why they believed all I would get directed to is their holy texts and subjective feelings. No objective evidence, no experiments to review or repeat to verify any of the claims they make, no way to validate anything. There are problems with PEOPLE in science, afterall they are only human, but thats not science itself.
???
Peer reviewed literature? Isn't that also what someone else wrote - something you have no first-hand knowledge off? In reality it's no different to believing what's written in some holy book. OTHER PEOPLES WORDS. Period.
Religion tends to answer different questions that science. Why is a question that you can keep asking over and over till the person you talk to runs out of answers. And it will eventually, no matter if it's a priest or a scientist...so repeating it is a fallacy in itself.
At any rate, for an atheist to say they do not believe in God because of the evidence is to have faith that the means of producing those evidence are entirely truthful and unflawed, which anyone with a serious science education can tell you is a line of crap.
Like I said before I am an atheist because I see no reason to believe in one. That requires no faith.
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A slight correction on one of your earlier assumptions - about religion ignoring evidence against it...O.k, some do. I'd be very interested to see some real evidence against my religion tough..havn't seen it yet.
and to clarify another thing - we all believe a lot of things we don't know for sure. It's normal. Most of the things we "know" we heard or read. We cannot be sure if it's correct unless we test everything ourselves. There are many things we can't test yet we still believe - like if there is intelligent life in the universe. Everyone has an oppinion on it, everyone belives there either is or isn't, alltough no one knows for sure.
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If that is the ground level on top of which even the atheist must build, how is it pointless? That part of reality can be ignored without fear of ill-effects?
As I see it, the existence of that fact doesn't make an atheist a believer in any way, but ignoring it is a step in that direction.
Suppose someone gave you a simple Kinetics question and asks you what speed an object would be travelling at after a certain amount of force is applied. You give them an answer and someone comes along and tells you that you've forgotten that the Earth is moving and you must add its velocity to whatever your result was. Velocity relative to what? Whatever point in space you take is completely arbitrary and therefore meaningless anyway.
Suppose a lion chases a gazelle because it needs food and is hungry. Are you saying that the lion has faith that gazelles are food? To claim that faith applies to all animal behaviour is to stretch the definition of the word to a ridiculous level but much of human behaviour is based on the same instinct. We know that when we are hungry that food will stop that impulse same as an animal does. Are you saying that we take that on faith but animals are using something else? Or are you claiming that animals also have faith?
If you stretch the word faith to mean what you are trying to make it mean then the word becomes completely meaningless.
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Suppose someone gave you a simple Kinetics question and asks you what speed an object would be travelling at after a certain amount of force is applied. You give them an answer and someone comes along and tells you that you've forgotten that the Earth is moving and you must add its velocity to whatever your result was. Velocity relative to what? Whatever point in space you take is completely arbitrary and therefore meaningless anyway.
Yes. And in order to be able to say that, you need to be aware that there are no absolutes, only selected points of reference. Thats all I was saying in the first place.
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Yes but it's rather pointless to bring it up in a discussion in which everyone is using the same point of reference.
If someone says that an object has x Kilojoules of kinetic energy after a certain amount of force it's completely ****ing pointless to start bringing in zero point energy or how much energy it has due to the Earth's movement. The only reason to do that is basically to try to look like a smartarse.
Similarly the fact that we exist is implicit in any discussion about faith. It's completely ****ing pointless to bring up the fact you you might not exist. If we don't we wouldn't be here to have the debate. Bringing it up undermines the entire discussion and the only reason someone would do it is to try to look like a smartarse.
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and speaking of smartasses, how dare you call me out on making a clerical error in my communist-victim body count. :p ;)
Though I don't know where the hell 100,000 million came from. That's three zeroes too many. Anyways, its apparent I can't do math. :nervous:
anyways, I think that the breakdowns were 60 million killed by Mao, 20 million or so during the Bolshevik Revolution, 30 million during the Purges under Stalin, and we're not even getting into Adventures 'Round the world with Vietnam, Korea, Afghanistan, various South American regimes, etc.
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Riight. Well, good night in any case ;)
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If an increase in knowledge is defined as a verifiable increase in understanding, then religion is not or ever was a knowledge producing institution.
Knowledge does not imply understanding at any level. If you do indeed have an education you should know that - it's the basics.
Like I said in my last reply to Trashman, if I wanted to I could read the peer reviewed literature, review and even repeat whatever experiments that were conducted to see if I can find flaws. I can submit my own papers for review and if its a well established consensus I have challenged, and Im right about it, I will gain much prestige.
That's a well-written paragraph, but that alone doesn't save it from that fact that it doesn't address my point in the slightest. The privatization of science into a priviledged sector of knowledge occurs whether or not we can go read the peer-reviewed journals. Repeated experiments, as I pointed out already, often lead to entirely different results - much of science is never actually replicated. Whether or not you like to admit it, much of science's discoveries, especially in "softer" sciences, are taken entirely on trust. Specialization of knowledge has put serious science well beyond the everyday comprehension of the layman.
Religion on the other hand has a lot of believers, but if I wanted to know why they believed all I would get directed to is their holy texts and subjective feelings. No objective evidence, no experiments to review or repeat to verify any of the claims they make, no way to validate anything. There are problems with PEOPLE in science, afterall they are only human, but thats not science itself.
Science is evidence-based. I'm not disputing that. But science itself DOES have flaws - the method was developed and is carried out by fallible human beings. Science tells us a great deal about "how" but very little about the "why." Science rarely gives us causal understandings in anything. Not saying religion DOES, just saying that ab absolute belief in the infallibility of science is actually quite irrational.
Religion isnt dependant on evidence its dependant on faith, and faith can only be self depective because it stops you questioning your beliefs. Faith can never help you gain knowledge but it will help you stay wrong forever. So no they arent comparable. If you dont agree then you'll need to show me where assuming a supernatural explanation has ever verifiably increased in our understanding.
You're not reading what I'm saying again. You're talking about organized religions today, where I actually tend to agree with you. That hasn't ALWAYS been the case though. You need to recognize that both science and religion are historically situated. Read some of the science that emerged in the earliest days of the Enlightenment. It IS science, but it is a science based on philosophy, not evidence, yet this is what gave birth to the modern sciences.
Like I said before I am an atheist because I see no reason to believe in one. That requires no faith.
Whether you care to admit it or not, your faith in the infallibility of science and evidence-based knowledge is contributing to that reason.
Any serious researcher will be the first one to tell you that science is very fallible and often misses huge parts of the big picture. Consider genetics, a field I'm familiar with. While Mendel first discovered genetic inheritance back in the 1800s, it wasn't until 1902 that his work was rediscovered. and it wasn't until the 1950s that we knew DNA was the responsible material. Prior to that, all kinds of crazy theories were accepted as absolute truth (most notably the protein hypothesis). Or consider gravity - Newton first published on gravity in the 1600s. It wasn't until the 1900s that research in special relativity yielded a new understanding of gravity.
Every scientist has to admit to faith in his methods and conclusions, because error means that we can never, 100% of the time, be right about anything. Yet we still consider it the best tool. And it is without a doubt the best tool. But that does not mean that we make an intellectual leap of faith in some part of each and every experiment and each and every conclusions that is drawn from them. Ultimately, you're trusting that error isn't confounding the results. Why? Because you have faith in the methodology. Sure, evidence to the present has shown that it works, but that doesn't mean it always works. Science's basic premise tells us that we should actually question if it does work.
So don't try to tell me there is no faith involved in science - there is. And it is a similar kind of faith to that required by religion. Many scientists will try to claim that religion is worthless, but I continually argue that it is not. If anything, religion is the biggest warning to science that the privilegizing processes of specialized knowledge are a dangerous thing - a lesson that we have thus far failed to take to heart to our own peril.
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My thought is as follows.
Religion: Governed by faith without "proof" for the benefit of the soul and spirit. Religious ideas are rarely changed and even then are almost always changed by force or by necessity.
Science: Governed by either purposefully acquired or situationally found "proof" for the benefit of the body and mind. Scientific ideas are readily changed, usually with no violence.
Religion without reason is dangerous, generally unproductive, and detrimental to the progress of knowledge.
Science without morals is hazardous, generally harmful to life, and detrimental to the progress of society.
In other words, one does not require science to lead a peaceful and happy life, but having some reason is definitely a must. Similarly, one does not require religious to lead a successful and happy life, but having some morals is without doubt completely necessary.
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Science is evidence-based. I'm not disputing that. But science itself DOES have flaws - the method was developed and is carried out by fallible human beings. Science tells us a great deal about "how" but very little about the "why." Science rarely gives us causal understandings in anything. Not saying religion DOES, just saying that ab absolute belief in the infallibility of science is actually quite irrational.
1) You assume there is a why. There may not be one. In which case science's inability to find it might not be a flaw in the method at all.
2) I doubt anyone will tell you that science has no flaws. But you seem unable to understand the difference between proceeding on a best guess and having faith that something is correct.
Any serious researcher will be the first one to tell you that science is very fallible and often misses huge parts of the big picture. Consider genetics, a field I'm familiar with. While Mendel first discovered genetic inheritance back in the 1800s, it wasn't until 1902 that his work was rediscovered. and it wasn't until the 1950s that we knew DNA was the responsible material. Prior to that, all kinds of crazy theories were accepted as absolute truth (most notably the protein hypothesis). Or consider gravity - Newton first published on gravity in the 1600s. It wasn't until the 1900s that research in special relativity yielded a new understanding of gravity.
Every scientist has to admit to faith in his methods and conclusions, because error means that we can never, 100% of the time, be right about anything. Yet we still consider it the best tool. And it is without a doubt the best tool. But that does not mean that we make an intellectual leap of faith in some part of each and every experiment and each and every conclusions that is drawn from them. Ultimately, you're trusting that error isn't confounding the results. Why? Because you have faith in the methodology. Sure, evidence to the present has shown that it works, but that doesn't mean it always works. Science's basic premise tells us that we should actually question if it does work.
Yes, and surely you can see that questioning the basic premise is the very antithesis of faith. There is nothing in science that is trusted. Even the very basics of the scientific method are questionable. If you want to claim that's a house of cards and that the entire thing would fall down if you can disprove the scientific method then I'll agree with you. But that doesn't mean that belief in the scientific method is taken on faith. You yourself are a scientist and say that it must be questioned. How is that faith?
You're pointing to the specialisation of science as if that means science is faith based. Again you're wrong. Single non-repeated experiments are not the very basis of science after all and are a much more modern product. The basics upon which they are built are much more heavily tested. To use the house of cards analogy again it's like a couple of cards on the top deck collapsing and you knocking down the entire thing saying "It doesn't work! The house can't be built without some form of external support!" You shouldn't ignore the fact that the bottom decks are quite sturdy and can take the weight of the upper layers as long as you build them correctly.
Yes there is a lot of specialisation in more modern science but that doesn't mean the entire thing is taken on faith. All it means is that more repetition of experiments is needed and that you shouldn't take something from a single paper as necessarily being 100% accurate. Guess what? Scientists don't. I know I certainly never trusted any methodology from a paper as true when I was working as a researcher. As far as I was concerned it wasn't true until I could reproduce it and I'd expect anyone following my results to have displayed the same amount of scepticism over the validity of my results. If you don't work on that assumption for anything that hasn't seen a very large amount of repeated experiments then you are a poor scientist.
Many scientists will try to claim that religion is worthless, but I continually argue that it is not. If anything, religion is the biggest warning to science that the privilegizing processes of specialized knowledge are a dangerous thing - a lesson that we have thus far failed to take to heart to our own peril.
By that logic we need keep Gengis Khan around to stop us from rampaging across Asia? Just because something is a warning doesn't mean we need to keep it around in its current form. Religion would still be a warning if it disappeared completely tomorrow as long as people remembered about it.
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By that logic we need keep Gengis Khan around to stop us from rampaging across Asia? Just because something is a warning doesn't mean we need to keep it around in its current form. Religion would still be a warning if it disappeared completely tomorrow as long as people remembered about it.
I don't have a clue what Genghis Khan rampaging around Asia has to do with the scientific method, so maybe we should have kept him around after all. :lol:
Oh, and have you ever considered that maybe you're the one missing the point? I've read over your post twice, and I can't see where you actually addressed MP-Ryan's main point. It's like you turned it into an attack on science while paying lip service to what he was actually saying.
Your condescending tone and arrogant attitude in this thread have really made me start to wonder if you care about having an intelligent debate after all, or if you're just being intentionally manipulative to make everyone agree with you, whether you're right or not.
In fact, I believe that the pattern of your style of debate completely contradicts the scientific method. You've started off a number of posts with saying how someone is completely wrong or is misunderstanding you or is 'unable to grasp' something, without ever seeming to consider the possibility that you're wrong, or that neither of you have enough information to say with any certainty. If you're trying to represent your side in the debate, you're doing a better job of representing a politician than a scientist.
Sorry to everyone else. I'd rather take the public shame if I'm wrong than be politely ignored in private.
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I don't have a clue what Genghis Khan rampaging around Asia has to do with the scientific method, so maybe we should have kept him around after all. :lol:
You do not need to keep around an actual live example of someone who has committed genocide in order to know not to do it. In a similar fashion you do not need to keep around religion in order for it to serve as a warning what science shouldn't do.
I might not be arguing that the world would be a better place without religion but I'm not going to use keeping it around as a poster child for what we shouldn't do as a reason why it should continue to exist.
Oh, and have you ever considered that maybe you're the one missing the point? I've read over your post twice, and I can't see where you actually addressed MP-Ryan's main point. It's like you turned it into an attack on science while paying lip service to what he was actually saying.
Funny cause that's not what I did at all. MP-Ryan stated that science is based on faith that the scientific method will give the correct result. I've said that it's not faith at all and given my arguments as to why it isn't.
How about we simply wait and see if MP-Ryan got it? If he did the lack is in you.
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Funny cause that's not what I did at all. MP-Ryan stated that science is based on faith that the scientific method will give the correct result. I've said that it's not faith at all and given my arguments as to why it isn't.
Which is exactly what I said you did: "It's like you turned it into an attack on science...".
How about we simply wait and see if MP-Ryan got it? If he did the lack is in you.
I'm not basing this solely on your discussion with MP-Ryan, I'm basing this on the direction this thread has gone and the direction that your posts have seemed to take it, in addition to the various comments you make about people misunderstanding you, being wrong, being unable to grasp things, etc etc.
In addition I'm basing this on your claims to be a scientist and to be neutral on this issue, and then resisting everything that someone affiliated with a religion says. As a scientist, I would have thought you would be interested in gathering information, not using it to beat people over the head with until they agree with you in an internet debate. Unless you believe that everyone else is so ignorant that they can't possibly contribute something that you don't already know.
There are two people who have represented themselves as having a religious point of view, and those seem to be the people that you've listened to the least. Since they're in short supply around here, why haven't you attempted to learn from them why they think religion is worth it?
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Which is exactly what I said you did: "It's like you turned it into an attack on science...".
Then you've drawn the wrong conclusion. I don't consider anything in MP-Ryan's post to be an attack on science. Nor have I responded to it as if it is one. If he considers acceptance of the value of the scientific method to be based on faith where as I consider it based on reason that doesn't mean that we don't both accept the validity of the scientific method.
I'm perfectly well aware that MP-Ryan is a scientist and as such unlikely to be responsible for an attack on science. Even though I have a philosophical disagreement with him about what science is derived from that doesn't mean I believe he is attacking it. And I doubt that he believes I said that either. We'll have to wait and see what he says on the matter.
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If an increase in knowledge is defined as a verifiable increase in understanding, then religion is not or ever was a knowledge producing institution.
Knowledge does not imply understanding at any level. If you do indeed have an education you should know that - it's the basics.
Aside from in increase in understanding, the only other definition of knowledge I can find is an increase in facts.
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/knowledge
http://www.askoxford.com/concise_oed/knowledge?view=uk
What verifiable facts does religion give us? I dont think you could point to any examples, but even if you did what verifiable facts does religion give us that science inherently cant?
That's a well-written paragraph, but that alone doesn't save it from that fact that it doesn't address my point in the slightest. The privatization of science into a priviledged sector of knowledge occurs whether or not we can go read the peer-reviewed journals. Repeated experiments, as I pointed out already, often lead to entirely different results - much of science is never actually replicated. Whether or not you like to admit it, much of science's discoveries, especially in "softer" sciences, are taken entirely on trust. Specialization of knowledge has put serious science well beyond the everyday comprehension of the layman.
I really dont believe that "much" of sciences discoveries are "entirely" taken on trust, because that implies faith. I'd like to know which discoveries and long held consensus' you believe are are taken "entirely" on faith. But forgetting that for the moment you're talking about about failures of the Scientific Community not science itself. When faith and bureaucracy cause scientists to fail to question their results even with peer review, when scientists dont question each other enough, then people are failing to do science properly. Its the scientific communities job to make sure that doesnt happen. OTOH religion is flawed from the core.
But with your same logic here the Bible is flawed because of how the Vatican, The Church of England or The Evangelical Christian right conduct themselves. Dont get me wrong the Bible is flawed for many reasons, but this argument cannot be an argument against it.
Science is evidence-based. I'm not disputing that. But science itself DOES have flaws - the method was developed and is carried out by fallible human beings. Science tells us a great deal about "how" but very little about the "why." Science rarely gives us causal understandings in anything. Not saying religion DOES, just saying that ab absolute belief in the infallibility of science is actually quite irrational.
So what are the flaws of the scientific method, and how can we make it better? If religion coulld really verifiably increase our knowledge in ways science cant, then the scientific method must be lacking in something.
And I dont like this "science teaches us how not why" argument for religion. I assume when anyone says this they dont mean "why do the leaves change colour in Autumn?" or "why is the sky blue?" or "why do children look different to their parents?" questions becuase science can certainly answer the "hows" and "whys". I assume they are looking for at a more metaphysical or spiritual question with "why". Now its very admirable to ask these quesion and want to know the answer and fun to come up with flights of fancy. I do itmsyelf. But unless you have any evidence all you are doing is making things up. We really could be living in The Matrix and its fun to discuss it as if it is so long as you know thats all you're doing.
Basically what you are really seem to be advocating is philosophy which Im all for, but thats not religion and thats not faith.
You're not reading what I'm saying again. You're talking about organized religions today, where I actually tend to agree with you.
No actually Im not talking about organised religion but what is fundamentally wrong with religion itself.
That hasn't ALWAYS been the case though. You need to recognize that both science and religion are historically situated. Read some of the science that emerged in the earliest days of the Enlightenment. It IS science, but it is a science based on philosophy, not evidence, yet this is what gave birth to the modern sciences.
Religion and science used to be intertwined, I know that. But whatever scientfic advancements they made they did so using the scientific method. Religon only hindered their advances if it conflicted with their faith. You have yet to show me how religion specifically can help or has ever helped advance our knowledge in a verifiable way that science inherently was unable to do. Also, theology and philosophy are different.
Like I said before I am an atheist because I see no reason to believe in one. That requires no faith.
Whether you care to admit it or not, your faith in the infallibility of science and evidence-based knowledge is contributing to that reason.
I dont believe science is infallible and I dont know why you just assumed thats what I believed. I see science as the only verifiable method we have of increasing our knowledge. If you know of a better way, or how science could be improved to do that better than I'd love to hear it.
And it sounds like you're joking when you say I am somehow stuck trusting in "evidence-based" knowledge but I guess you arent. What else is there other than just wishfull thinking and wanting something to be true?
Any serious researcher will be the first one to tell you that science is very fallible and often misses huge parts of the big picture. Consider genetics, a field I'm familiar with. While Mendel first discovered genetic inheritance back in the 1800s, it wasn't until 1902 that his work was rediscovered. and it wasn't until the 1950s that we knew DNA was the responsible material. Prior to that, all kinds of crazy theories were accepted as absolute truth (most notably the protein hypothesis). Or consider gravity - Newton first published on gravity in the 1600s. It wasn't until the 1900s that research in special relativity yielded a new understanding of gravity.
Once again you are talking about the Scientific Community. But speaking of which sometimes it may take a while to challenge the dominent theory but if the evidence is behind you it will eventually change it and if its something really big like a big change in the theory of gravity or when Hawking challenged Steady State much prestige and fame is gained by doing so. Mendel was just unlucky to have died never knowing how important his research was. None of this is still in any way comparable with anything in religion.
Every scientist has to admit to faith in his methods and conclusions, because error means that we can never, 100% of the time, be right about anything.
Of course honest scientist will admit they could be wrong or that we cannot know anything with absolute certainty. But many things are proved beyond reasonable doubt. Thats why scientific "Theories" are the highest point of investigation because theres always more to learn. Evolution is probably the most well supported theory in science but Im sure it is wrong in some way and we'll continue to learn and improve upon it in the future. It could be totaly wrong, and all the evidence could just be some unbelievable coincidence, but thats not too probable.
Yet we still consider it the best tool. And it is without a doubt the best tool. But that does not mean that we make an intellectual leap of faith in some part of each and every experiment and each and every conclusions that is drawn from them. Ultimately, you're trusting that error isn't confounding the results. Why?
Well Im not, so Im not sure why you assumed all this about me in order to ask the question.
Because you have faith in the methodology. Sure, evidence to the present has shown that it works, but that doesn't mean it always works. Science's basic premise tells us that we should actually question if it does work.
Yes I know and if I drop an apple there is a chance it could fly up into the air instead of fall to the ground. We could all really be in the Matrix or just be apart of some Zen dream but that isnt likely and science isnt going to pay much attention to such philosophical post-humanistic masturbation without a good reason. Lots of things are possible but far less things are probable. Gods could be real, Im certianly not denying that, but I also dont think its at all probable enough to believe in. So, I dont believe in Gods, since I see no reason to believe in one.
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I'm perfectly well aware that MP-Ryan is a scientist and as such unlikely to be responsible for an attack on science. Even though I have a philosophical disagreement with him about what science is derived from that doesn't mean I believe he is attacking it. And I doubt that he believes I said that either. We'll have to wait and see what he says on the matter.
Oh my...
No, I don't think you're twisting me into an attack on science but I do think you've missed a couple of the things I've said (which were mostly in reply to Ed).
Essentially, every scientist out there should be skeptical of the scientific method, and the experiments which gave us our results. Statistics try to eliminate random chance but you and I both know that probability-based measures just reduce the liklihood of randomness, they don't eliminate it. Perhaps for the most part we all do question our methos and results, and those of others, but at the end of the day we're all accepting these as reasonable guesses (as you said). But why do we accept those as reasonable guesses? We really have no proof one way or the other if they are - we're basing our judgement on past history, but science itself tells us that past findings are in many cases meaningless, full of error, or completely wrong (and I don't think I need to cite you examples of this).
Scientists ultimately point to rationality in the method as the reason wy they believe it yields best guesses most of the time, but if we take a survey of scientific findings over history we find that most of the guesses were actually wrong, which led us to the correct ones - or rather, what we accept as correct at this point in time. Ultimately, they will probably continue to change. That's the reason we accept science as a somewhat flawed though valid method, because it builds and changes its premises according to fact. The method itself isn't actually rational, given the amount of error in it. It's an approximation of a perfect rational method in which all variables are accounted for or eliminated.
It doesn't matter how far we reduce the basic intellectual components required for science, we will always find an unaccounted factor that mucks up results and leads to a lot of erroneous conclusions, even in modern science. Yet pretty much every scientist reaches the conclusion that says "even though we know this data isn't actually true, we're going to accept it as our best guess because its all we have, and past guesses have led to improvement in understanding even if they were false). It's the equivalent of an intellectual leap of faith - we all believe in the method and the results that it produces in the long term and larger scheme of things to such an extent that we knowingly overlook its flaws.
That's faith, and it is very similar to the faith required by religion.
The only real difference between science and religion is acceptance and change of facts - religions have moved to the point where change is rarely possible or accepted because of doctrine. Science is also slowly moving in that direction, but it has 1500 years to catch up to where religion is today. That's worrisome.
I never actually addressed the original premise of this thread: do I think the world would be better off without religion? The short answer is that I believe the world would be better off without religion that is entangled heavily in power structures and relationships. Religion, without those social trappings, is an important guiding principle for many people. Religion has done a lot of good in this world; religious power structures have done far more evil.
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Im skipping much of this as I have still have my other post and I wouldnt want to cover old ground.
But why do we accept those as reasonable guesses? We really have no proof one way or the other if they are - we're basing our judgement on past history, but science itself tells us that past findings are in many cases meaningless, full of error, or completely wrong (and I don't think I need to cite you examples of this).
Well no I do think if you're going to make this kind of claim you should tell us what kind of thing you're talking about.
It's an approximation of a perfect rational method in which all variables are accounted for or eliminated.
You know its almost like you are just arguing against the belief that science is perfect and 100% infallible something Ive never heard any scientist profess to believing even though Im sure they must exist somewhere.
The second issue I think is a seperate issue and its that you claim religion is also a knowledge producing institution. I think even if science was 100 times worse than you make out religion would still be inherently useless as a knowledge provider.
Yet pretty much every scientist reaches the conclusion that says "even though we know this data isn't actually true, we're going to accept it as our best guess because its all we have, and past guesses have led to improvement in understanding even if they were false).
Oh come on, who says that and about what? You should be able to inundate me with examples since you say its pretty much all scientists that say that. Ive never heard this claim except by Creationists, so it baffles me that you are making some of the same arguments. I hope you arent going to claim that scientists tentatively accepting a hypothesis for the sake of research is the same thing as what you're talking about.
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What verifiable facts does religion give us? I dont think you could point to any examples, but even if you did what verifiable facts does religion give us that science inherently cant?
Ever sat down and read the entirety of Genesis in the Christian religion? It's an excellent metaphorical version of Big Bang theory as its understood today. Verifiable fact? Not really. A useful interpretation of the existence of the world at the time of its writing? Absolutely. Religion does not yield verifiable facts as science does, which is why science has evolved as the method of choice for understanding the world - something I'm not disputing (if I were, I should be a priest, not a scientist).
I really dont believe that "much" of sciences discoveries are "entirely" taken on trust, because that implies faith. I'd like to know which discoveries and long held consensus' you believe are are taken "entirely" on faith. But forgetting that for the moment you're talking about about failures of the Scientific Community not science itself. When faith and bureaucracy cause scientists to fail to question their results even with peer review, when scientists dont question each other enough, then people are failing to do science properly. Its the scientific communities job to make sure that doesnt happen. OTOH religion is flawed from the core.
But with your same logic here the Bible is flawed because of how the Vatican, The Church of England or The Evangelical Christian right conduct themselves. Dont get me wrong the Bible is flawed for many reasons, but this argument cannot be an argument against it.
I addressed this more with karajorma, but science is an approximation of a pure rational method, not a rational method itself. The majority of scientific discoveries at this point in time are never verified by replication; rather, they are tested when others base their premises on that work and the whole thing collapses (or not). We trust that published discoveries are true to the extent they can be by the method until we see otherwise. The perpetual skepticism of science has been greatly reduced since its earliest days. Ultimately, we tend to accept things as true until shown otherwise, rather than accepting things as false until given convincing data in support of them as the scientific method tells us to. There is a degree of trust and certainty in every scientific discovery and experiment, which equates to faith as you yourself stated.
I never said the Bible wasn't flawed; it's a greatly flawed document, great story but not even an approximation of history. metaphorically we can see how its meaning fits modern theory, but there are large chunks of the Bible that were cut to essentially fit the political nature of the period. Do not interpret my saying that science requires faith at some level to mean that I believe religious texts are a better way of understanding the world.
So what are the flaws of the scientific method, and how can we make it better? If religion coulld really verifiably increase our knowledge in ways science cant, then the scientific method must be lacking in something.
The scientific method is incapable for accounting for all the variables in a problem; as such, we need either a way to include all the variables (which an understanding of chaos theory tells us is essentially impossible; variables are not finite) or a way to reduce their effects to an extent that in practice removes all error from conclusions (again, a practical impossibility). The scientific method is an approximation of rationality, and I personally can't comprehend a method of perfect rationality; I'm inclined to think that one doesn't exist, or may only exist at levels beyond our comprehension.
Basically what you are really seem to be advocating is philosophy which Im all for, but thats not religion and thats not faith.
You've drifted away from my argument again. Science requires a level of faith is all I'm saying. I'm not advocating for religion outside of an understanding of religion that makes people see where it "fits" in our historical understanding of the world. Science could not exist without religion, and religion AND science will exist so long as humans are willing to use some element of faith in their understanding. If/when that ceases, a new method will likely emerge.
Like it or not, science was born of religion.
No actually Im not talking about organised religion but what is fundamentally wrong with religion itself.
Without religion in the earliest days of our history, we would not have science today. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with religion (it was a knowledge-producing institution) until power entered into it.
Religion and science used to be intertwined, I know that. But whatever scientfic advancements they made they did so using the scientific method. Religon only hindered their advances if it conflicted with their faith. You have yet to show me how religion specifically can help or has ever helped advance our knowledge in a verifiable way that science inherently was unable to do. Also, theology and philosophy are different.
Philosophy was born of religion, and science is derived from philosophy. The earliest science (not necessarily modern/Enlightenement science) came out of religious understanding (consider stonehenge, Macchu Pichu, and other ancient celestial sites). It is true that as of the Enlightenment religion began to hinder science, but if anything that hindrance led a great many curious and stubborn soles to outright defiance and scientific discovery.
Religion led mankind to question and to wonder, and to seek answers before science ever existed. Today, that role is entirely different, but it was necessary to where we sit in contemporary society.
I dont believe science is infallible and I dont know why you just assumed thats what I believed. I see science as the only verifiable method we have of increasing our knowledge. If you know of a better way, or how science could be improved to do that better than I'd love to hear it.
And it sounds like you're joking when you say I am somehow stuck trusting in "evidence-based" knowledge but I guess you arent. What else is there other than just wishfull thinking and wanting something to be true?
Just because science is the sole institution producing verifiable fact today doesn't mean that it requires no faith; one does not negate the other. You have faith in the evidence, even though science tells us the evidence is only an approximation of reality. I won't dispute that evidence-based knowledge is the sole primarily useful form of knowledge, but we have erroneous or a lack of evidence in a great many things, yet you fundamentally accept those things as true.
We have no evidence that supports existence on a higher plane of existence (call it what you will) at present but that does not necessarily mean it will always be so. Similarly, at one time we had no evidence that the atom was divisible, yet subsequent discoveries made that possible.
I don't pretend to know one way or the other about a great many things, including higher planes of existence, but I don't pretend that I can dismiss the possibility outright, just as I don't dismiss the possibility tthat our understanding of gravity is flawed. We just don't know. I work based on the evidence we have at present, and skepticism prevents me from accepting possibilities that seem patently ridiculous at present, but this does not mean I have absolute conviction that the evidence to date is completely true.
Once again you are talking about the Scientific Community. But speaking of which sometimes it may take a while to challenge the dominent theory but if the evidence is behind you it will eventually change it and if its something really big like a big change in the theory of gravity or when Hawking challenged Steady State much prestige and fame is gained by doing so. Mendel was just unlucky to have died never knowing how important his research was. None of this is still in any way comparable with anything in religion.
I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about the fallibility of the scientific method and the scientific community that uses it to demonstrate that complete trust in scientific evidence amounts to faith.
Of course honest scientist will admit they could be wrong or that we cannot know anything with absolute certainty. But many things are proved beyond reasonable doubt. Thats why scientific "Theories" are the highest point of investigation because theres always more to learn. Evolution is probably the most well supported theory in science but Im sure it is wrong in some way and we'll continue to learn and improve upon it in the future. It could be totaly wrong, and all the evidence could just be some unbelievable coincidence, but thats not too probable.
Nothing has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Probability does not at all equate to near-certainty. We can only support theories, not prove them or near-prove them, something a lot of believers in science tend to overlook.
Well Im not, so Im not sure why you assumed all this about me in order to ask the question.
Your responses to date have shown a reluctance to accept the fluidity of scientific discovery. You seem to believe the evidence is usually right, whereas I believe the evidence is usually wrong and its only a matter of time until it is improved upon.
Yes I know and if I drop an apple there is a chance it could fly up into the air instead of fall to the ground. We could all really be in the Matrix or just be apart of some Zen dream but that isnt likely and science isnt going to pay much attention to such philosophical post-humanistic masturbation without a good reason. Lots of things are possible but far less things are probable. Gods could be real, Im certianly not denying that, but I also dont think its at all probable enough to believe in. So, I dont believe in Gods, since I see no reason to believe in one.
Ah, but science does pay attention to the improbabilities - that's how new influential discoveries are usually made. Not to mention, improbabilities have a real nasty way of screwing up experiments. Error/improbability/uncontrolled variables are the most important part of science.
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Well no I do think if you're going to make this kind of claim you should tell us what kind of thing you're talking about.
Are you serious? Do you really want a history of scientific failings? I'll compile a short one (eventually, it'll take a while) if you insist but if you have any training in the sciences at all you should be able to come up with at least three big ones.
You know its almost like you are just arguing against the belief that science is perfect and 100% infallible something Ive never heard any scientist profess to believing even though Im sure they must exist somewhere.
There have been meanderings in that direction in this particular thread, so I wanted it cleared up. People are far too ready to jump to a conclusion that science is rational and produces good evidence most of the time, which isn't true.
The second issue I think is a seperate issue and its that you claim religion is also a knowledge producing institution. I think even if science was 100 times worse than you make out religion would still be inherently useless as a knowledge provider.
Religion WAS a knowledge-producing institution is the only claim I've made, and I've never said it was even close to or superior to science. Don't put words in my mouth.... er, text.
Oh come on, who says that and about what? You should be able to inundate me with examples since you say its pretty much all scientists that say that. Ive never heard this claim except by Creationists, so it baffles me that you are making some of the same arguments. I hope you arent going to claim that scientists tentatively accepting a hypothesis for the sake of research is the same thing as what you're talking about.
Every single experimenter *boggle*. When we perform experiments, we know:
1. We haven't identified, nevermind controlled, all relevant variables.
2. There could be errors in our experimental design.
3. There could be errors in our statistical significance due to (1)
4. Better discoveries come from old discoveries, even if they weren't true.
5. We cannot measure reality without manipulating it, and we cannot measure it perfectly (Heisenberg Pricniple)
6. While the simplest explanation may not be the real explanation, we accept it as such (Walter's Canon)
Creationists don't subscribe to that line of thinking. Typically, Creationists try to poke very selective holes in the evidence with the idea to collapse the theory, but usually it's due to a lack of understanding of the theory itself and mechanisms behind it.
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I've noticed a persistent misinterpretation of the term "faith" in this thread to mean "unsupported and/or blind belief". It should be clarified that that's not what faith is. Faith is trust based on past experience: trust that A will continue to be A in the future, or trust that A will continue to lead to B. Thus you can have faith in God and faith in science at the same time; but "having faith in science" doesn't mean that you worship science or the scientific method as some sort of god.
I've also noticed that certain Christians seem to be making the very same mistake that n00bs make when they want everybody to make FS3: they assume that a small bit of experience makes them an expert. N00bs who have just learned FRED will log on to HLP and try to recruit a team to make The Next Uber Campaign. Similarly, Christians who have learned a tiny bit of theology often think that qualifies them to argue on the same level with people who have been athiests or agnostics their entire lives.
Incidentally, science is not without its "argument from authority" faults. Astronomers look for dark matter as a solution to anomalies in their understanding of gravity, even though it's much more likely, historically, that a modified theory of gravity is needed and that dark matter no more exists than does luminiferous aether or phlogiston. James Watson was recently forced out of his job by stating an opinion that, while supported by evidence, was politically unpopular. Global warming is being rammed down everybody's throats as a political solution despite the fact that the supposed effects of human activity are either a) impossible to correlate with actual climate change; or b) insignificant when compared to natural events (bovine methane generation, or deforestation from Hurricane Katrina).
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I've noticed a persistent misinterpretation of the term "faith" in this thread to mean "unsupported and/or blind belief". It should be clarified that that's not what faith is. Faith is trust based on past experience: trust that A will continue to be A in the future, or trust that A will continue to lead to B. Thus you can have faith in God and faith in science at the same time; but "having faith in science" doesn't mean that you worship science or the scientific method as some sort of god.
Thank you for clearing that up, you put it better than I ever could have.
James Watson was recently forced out of his job by stating an opinion that, while supported by evidence, was politically unpopular.
Umm, it's not supported by the evidence. Watson's argument was based on some pseudo-biological understanding of race that dates back to the 19th century. For a geneticist to same something like that is truly bizarre (a very few select alleles correlate to race, but they have more to do with disease than anything else). But your other examples are reasonably legitimate.
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Are you serious? Do you really want a history of scientific failings? I'll compile a short one (eventually, it'll take a while) if you insist but if you have any training in the sciences at all you should be able to come up with at least three big ones.
How about just 1 or 2 examples so we know what you're talking about when you say these things.
There have been meanderings in that direction in this particular thread, so I wanted it cleared up. People are far too ready to jump to a conclusion that science is rational and produces good evidence most of the time, which isn't true.
Except I would agree with that but thats hardly the same as thinking science is 100% infallible and can provide absolute knowledge.
The second issue I think is a seperate issue and its that you claim religion is also a knowledge producing institution. I think even if science was 100 times worse than you make out religion would still be inherently useless as a knowledge provider.
Religion WAS a knowledge-producing institution is the only claim I've made, and I've never said it was even close to or superior to science. Don't put words in my mouth.... er, text.
I never said you said it was superior to science, I dont know where you got that from my post. But you did say religion is knowledge producing institution:
"This is precisely why religion and science are actually two disparate forms of the same-knowledge producing structure.....science and religion are historically two halves of the same whole... Both have a role to play..."
And this is what Im challenging you on.
Oh come on, who says that and about what? You should be able to inundate me with examples since you say its pretty much all scientists that say that. Ive never heard this claim except by Creationists, so it baffles me that you are making some of the same arguments. I hope you arent going to claim that scientists tentatively accepting a hypothesis for the sake of research is the same thing as what you're talking about.
Every single experimenter *boggle*. When we perform experiments, we know:
1. We haven't identified, nevermind controlled, all relevant variables.
2. There could be errors in our experimental design.
3. There could be errors in our statistical significance due to (1)
4. Better discoveries come from old discoveries, even if they weren't true.
5. We cannot measure reality without manipulating it, and we cannot measure it perfectly (Heisenberg Pricniple)
6. While the simplest explanation may not be the real explanation, we accept it as such (Walter's Canon)
1-4 are just reasons why an experiment might be flawed. I dont know how you think listing these possible flaws as answering the question. They taught me in school science class what might cause an experiment to yield less accurate results.
As for 5, that is true in the sence that people question them and find out they're wrong. For example geocentricity being proved wrong. Thats hardly the same thing as what you're talking about. You seem to suggest this is some kind of failing, but questioning long held ideas is essential to science.
With 6 I tried looking up Walter's Canon and couldnt find anything but if you're talking about Occams Razor it only works to a point. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one but only when it agrees with the evidence.
Creationists don't subscribe to that line of thinking. Typically, Creationists try to poke very selective holes in the evidence with the idea to collapse the theory, but usually it's due to a lack of understanding of the theory itself and mechanisms behind it.
They do that yes, but they also either attack science in more or less the same way you have or they pretend science should and can include supernatural assumptions.
I've noticed a persistent misinterpretation of the term "faith" in this thread to mean "unsupported and/or blind belief". It should be clarified that that's not what faith is. Faith is trust based on past experience: trust that A will continue to be A in the future, or trust that A will continue to lead to B. Thus you can have faith in God and faith in science at the same time; but "having faith in science" doesn't mean that you worship science or the scientific method as some sort of god.
Religious faith is defined as complete confidence in a belief that doesnt rest on material evidence. If you're using the word as just a synonym for trust, its not a relevant definition to the discussion.
Incidentally, science is not without its "argument from authority" faults. Astronomers look for dark matter as a solution to anomalies in their understanding of gravity, even though it's much more likely, historically, that a modified theory of gravity is needed and that dark matter no more exists than does luminiferous aether or phlogiston.
I just nod and say "okay" and "that an interesting idea" or when I talk about it I say "apparently" or "according to astronomers". I dont know anything about it but why are you saying its more likely, are you an Astronomer?
James Watson was recently forced out of his job by stating an opinion that, while supported by evidence, was politically unpopular. Global warming is being rammed down everybody's throats as a political solution despite the fact that the supposed effects of human activity are either a) impossible to correlate with actual climate change; or b) insignificant when compared to natural events (bovine methane generation, or deforestation from Hurricane Katrina).
As far as I can see the anti-climate change people that produced a program for channel 4 have about as much credability as the Intelligent Design movement. But thats opening a big can of worms and its already complicated discussion as it is.
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Umm, it's not supported by the evidence. Watson's argument was based on some pseudo-biological understanding of race that dates back to the 19th century. For a geneticist to same something like that is truly bizarre (a very few select alleles correlate to race, but they have more to do with disease than anything else). But your other examples are reasonably legitimate.
And there you go demonstrating argument from authority. If you actually take a look at studies and tests, you'll find a correlation between average intelligence and race. Now assuredly there are outliers on both ends of the intelligence scale in every race: both remarkably smart people and remarkably stupid people. But on the average, the correlation holds.
And you should also consider common sense. Considering that different human races developed in a variety environments over the course of human history, each with their own temperature, flora and fauna, and seasonal variations. Each race was geographically and biologically isolated, and each developed its own independent responses to environmental stimuli. Biologists have no problem admitting that different races have different susceptibilities to diseases. Why should they have a problem with admitting that they have different levels of intelligence?
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because that's a huge can of worms...
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So is evolution. :p
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No, I don't think you're twisting me into an attack on science but I do think you've missed a couple of the things I've said (which were mostly in reply to Ed).
I haven't missed them. I disagree with them. :p
Essentially, every scientist out there should be skeptical of the scientific method, and the experiments which gave us our results. Statistics try to eliminate random chance but you and I both know that probability-based measures just reduce the liklihood of randomness, they don't eliminate it. Perhaps for the most part we all do question our methos and results, and those of others, but at the end of the day we're all accepting these as reasonable guesses (as you said). But why do we accept those as reasonable guesses? We really have no proof one way or the other if they are - we're basing our judgement on past history, but science itself tells us that past findings are in many cases meaningless, full of error, or completely wrong (and I don't think I need to cite you examples of this).
Agreed 100% but it's actually in that statement I think I see the nub of the problem. We're making different assumptions about what science is and what it's purpose is. If I take your assumptions as true then I'll agree with you that there is faith in science. If I take mine however I'll end up on the same side of the argument as Ed saying that there isn't.
If you take science as being the rational attempt to find the truth then yes there is a lot of faith in the scientific method involved. However that's not what I think it's for. Science is an attempt to find the best answer you can. The one that will give you the best explanation of what you see and the best method to predict what will happen next. And that it does that is not something that I take on faith.
You've pointed to many occasions where science was wrong. And I'll agree that it was wrong on those occasions but however it still gave the best answer that was possible at the time. Newton may have been later proved wrong about gravity but without science he couldn't have done better. Darwin may have been wrong about the causes of hereditary but not knowing Mendel's work he did the best he could.
In both cases although flawed the theories created as a result were able to propel researchers following their work in directions they wouldn't have been able to otherwise. Those researchers had the best answer they could have at the time. It allowed them to get results they couldn't have gotten using other methods.
To use an evolutionary example you are seem to be treating science as the caricature of evolution. A steady progression of forms getting more and more advanced as time goes on. I'm saying that science is more like the true picture of evolution, a series of forms each as best adapted to their environment as possible.
If you look at history taking that as your starting point would you not agree that since it first started science has in general given us the best answer we could have gotten given the state of knowledge and technology of the time? Is there a methodology that could have done better?
As for the scientific method itself, if tomorrow someone does invent a methodology that results in better answers than science I'd be happy to use it instead. It would be unscientific to do otherwise after all. :p
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How about just 1 or 2 examples so we know what you're talking about when you say these things.
-Lamarckian theory, its precursors, and derivatives.
-Early Freudian psychology
Those are two fairly well known examples that are completely wrong - Freudian personality theory is STILL taught in University psychology classes, including the stages of development, id/ego/superego, and oedipus and electra complexes. Lamarckian theory is still confused by a great many people as being part of evolution (hence the failure to comprehend natural selection). Two scientific figures and their discoveries that were entirely false, yet still remain in the public consciousness. There are many others.
Except I would agree with that but thats hardly the same as thinking science is 100% infallible and can provide absolute knowledge.
Close enough. As I said, twice, science is an approximation of a rational method and it yields usually negative findings or bad conclusions that eventually lead to better (but still false at some level) conclusions. The drift distance between what you agree with and what you've written as bad understanding is minimal.
The second issue I think is a seperate issue and its that you claim religion is also a knowledge producing institution. I think even if science was 100 times worse than you make out religion would still be inherently useless as a knowledge provider.
"This is precisely why religion and science are actually two disparate forms of the same-knowledge producing structure.....science and religion are historically two halves of the same whole... Both have a role to play..."
And this is what Im challenging you on.
*blink* "Historically" has heavy emphasis in all my posts. Religion was a useful knowledge-producing structure at one point in history, much as science is today. And again, without early religion we never would have gotten science.
1-4 are just reasons why an experiment might be flawed. I dont know how you think listing these possible flaws as answering the question. They taught me in school science class what might cause an experiment to yield less accurate results.
As for 5, that is true in the sence that people question them and find out they're wrong. For example geocentricity being proved wrong. Thats hardly the same thing as what you're talking about. You seem to suggest this is some kind of failing, but questioning long held ideas is essential to science.
With 6 I tried looking up Walter's Canon and couldnt find anything but if you're talking about Occams Razor it only works to a point. The simplest explanation is usually the correct one but only when it agrees with the evidence.
I don't think you understood my original point. Briefly summed up: scientists know every result and every conclusion has some element of "wrongness" to it, but they ignore it and consider their findings a best guess. Those 6 points are the contributing elements that lead to that conclusion. Point 5 tells us that our results can never be correct, because measurement interferes with the natural mechanics of a phenomenon. Walter's canon is the same thing (essentially) as Occam's Razor; we assume the simplest explanation in agreement with the evidence to be correct, yet gravity (to continue to pick on poor old Newton) is just one theory where that wasn't actually the case.
They do that yes, but they also either attack science in more or less the same way you have or they pretend science should and can include supernatural assumptions.
I've never heard a Creationist espouse my argument, mostly because it requires an in-depth knowledge of the scientific method itself. They approximate it by trying to say there are things science can't understand, makes mistakes on, or is fooled by God, but I've never heard one point to a intellectual leap of faith (as I've constructed it) by science. They'll say we take things on faith like peer-reviewed journals and specialists and try to equate that to Holy texts all the time, but that facile argument is not the one I'm making here.
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And you should also consider common sense. Considering that different human races developed in a variety environments over the course of human history, each with their own temperature, flora and fauna, and seasonal variations. Each race was geographically and biologically isolated, and each developed its own independent responses to environmental stimuli. Biologists have no problem admitting that different races have different susceptibilities to diseases. Why should they have a problem with admitting that they have different levels of intelligence?
Well there are two reasons I can think of right off the top of my head.
1) The human race is not very diverse at all. Toba (probably) nearly wiped us out. We're all genetically much closer to each other than the other animals which show huge diversity.
2) Humanity is much more intermixed that people believe. I remember a program on TV recently took 4 people who were very proud of their Britishness and gave them a DNA test to establish what percentage of their DNA actually came from the tribes that lived in Britain a millennia or two ago. Only one out of four turned out to be completely European and none of them was completely British. Many of them turned out to have a surprising large amount of DNA (30-40% in some cases) from places like the Middle East or Asia.
With that kind of mixing going on I'd imagine it's pretty hard to claim that any race is really isolated for long enough to have any major evolutionary effects on intelligence.
Of course MP-Ryan probably knows more on the subject than I do.
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And there you go demonstrating argument from authority. If you actually take a look at studies and tests, you'll find a correlation between average intelligence and race. Now assuredly there are outliers on both ends of the intelligence scale in every race: both remarkably smart people and remarkably stupid people. But on the average, the correlation holds.
Not really. You're probably referring to research such as that conducted in the book "The Bell Curve" and by the infamous Phillip Rushton.
There is absolutely no correlation between race and intelligence, and here's why:
1. We don't measure intelligence. We measure indicators we believe represent intelligence, but usually those indicators don't actually correlate to biological processes but rather environmental effects. When we do measure biological processes, as in MZ/DZ twin studies, it's not intelligence as a whole but rather different abilities which contribute to what we call intelligence, and no study has actually tried to measure all of them. We can expect geographic variation on cognitive traits based on historical environment and closed gene pools contributing to extremely low levels of natural selection in particular geographic areas.
2. Most intelligence studies are carried out in a particular nation, usually the United States. Disparate levels of education contribute more to IQ and measures of intelligence than do inherit biological ability, as does socioculturally-targeted testing. African Americans score lower on IQ tests in the US than do whites. Yet, if we look at the tests, we find that the types of questions usually have nothing to do with intelligence (e.g. an intimate knowledge of the rules of tennis), and they are targeted toward a middle-upper class Caucasian audience.
3. When carried out across cultures, intelligence testing does not control for cultural variances. We stop measuring innate abilities and start measuring acquired abilities (e.g. education).
4. In mouse studies of the heritability of intelligence, we find that environment places a large role in developing innate ability. In other words, gene-environment interactions negate any valid conclusions about heritability.
I should have warned you, you just stumbled into one of my personal annoyance areas in genetics that I follow closely =)
There is absolutely no scientific validity in correlations of race and intelligence.
That said - there is likely a correlation between the particular cognitive abilities that make up intelligence and race - there certainly is between the sexes. This doesn't mean some races or sexes are smarter than others, but rather that some have cognitive strength in particular areas and weaknesses in others. We don't see this fluidity and variability in intelligence testing because our tests measure only a few selected traits which we associate with smartness, thus leading to bad conclusions (e.g. that men are smarter than women; that asians are smarter than all other races). It's bad science - ultimately, social variables get in the way. Animal models actually present a much better picture of the heritability of intelligence because social structure isn't really measured.
So, next time you read something talking about correlations of intelligence and race, throw it away, it's garbage. There are too many other factors and too many flaws in our measuring tools to even begin to tackle that question.
And you should also consider common sense. Considering that different human races developed in a variety environments over the course of human history, each with their own temperature, flora and fauna, and seasonal variations. Each race was geographically and biologically isolated, and each developed its own independent responses to environmental stimuli. Biologists have no problem admitting that different races have different susceptibilities to diseases. Why should they have a problem with admitting that they have different levels of intelligence?
I talked about this a little bit above, but I want to re-emphasize:
We have a loaded, biased definition of intelligence.
Very specific cognitive abilities probably correlate to races, but it's (at present) next to impossible to measure validly and reliably (using those terms in their scientific meaning). Intelligence as a whole concept cannot be measured in biological terms. Should some populations have better particular abilities than others? Absolutely. It means they're better at those abilities, though, not smarter. We equate smartness with biology but smartness/intelligence is a social term, not a biological one.
Keep in mind too that it's not races that correlate with particular allelic traits, but reproduction patterns. Those patterns USED to correlate with race, and still do to some extent, but family history is the important factor, not race. If I had just one African American ancestor in the past 10 generations of my family, I could be a carrier for sickle cell anemia. Similarly, an African American could easily carry a particular northern European allele that carries functional immunity to HIV and makes them a carrier.
Race is a crude tool for disease analysis that will eventually be phased out with wider use of microarray technology where individual genomes will be examined for only a few hundred dollars or less.
Have I sufficiently made my point, or do I need to start digging up some sources too? =)
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In both cases although flawed the theories created as a result were able to propel researchers following their work in directions they wouldn't have been able to otherwise. Those researchers had the best answer they could have at the time. It allowed them to get results they couldn't have gotten using other methods.
Which is something I've pointed to all along, so I agree.
To use an evolutionary example you are seem to be treating science as the caricature of evolution. A steady progression of forms getting more and more advanced as time goes on. I'm saying that science is more like the true picture of evolution, a series of forms each as best adapted to their environment as possible.
I personally subscribe to the analogy of the true picture of evolution for science as you've indicated. What I'm saying is that many people take the first approach, seeing gradual improvement rather than acceptance that past explanations were wrong and modifying them for the current picture of historical understanding based on the accumulation of evidence.
If you look at history taking that as your starting point would you not agree that since it first started science has in general given us the best answer we could have gotten given the state of knowledge and technology of the time? Is there a methodology that could have done better?
Absolutely to the first, absolutely not to the second.
But that wasn't what I was saying. All I'm doing is knocking some of the great believers in science down a bit and trying to demonstrate that while it is the best approach and a reasonably good one, it is also frequently wrong, and every scientist must have a little faith that in the long run the conclusions he or she reaches are going to make a valuable, not a detractory, contribution. I use the term faith because we know from history that this isn't always the case, far from it.
EDIT: One more thing; I have some work to clear up today so that's it for me posting today. I'll have a look-see tomorrow evening.
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I personally subscribe to the analogy of the true picture of evolution for science as you've indicated. What I'm saying is that many people take the first approach, seeing gradual improvement rather than acceptance that past explanations were wrong and modifying them for the current picture of historical understanding based on the accumulation of evidence.
Agreed.
But that wasn't what I was saying. All I'm doing is knocking some of the great believers in science down a bit and trying to demonstrate that while it is the best approach and a reasonably good one, it is also frequently wrong, and every scientist must have a little faith that in the long run the conclusions he or she reaches are going to make a valuable, not a detractory, contribution. I use the term faith because we know from history that this isn't always the case, far from it.
Individual scientists, yes (with reservations). Science as a whole, no. And the point I got into this debate is whether science requires faith not at the level of a researcher saying he's correct but at the level of a person saying "I choose science not religion" Your initial claim that science was an evidence-based faith is what I took issue with. It doesn't require faith. Not at that level at least. Saying that any particular scientific theory is the one you believe doesn't require faith. You might be wrong but faith is not required to say it.
As for individual researchers I'm going to say that you might have to have faith to believe you are right (when the majority of scientists have been wrong) but not that you're going to make a contribution. Right or wrong most science does make a positive contribution simply due to the fact that it increases the amount of evidence that has been gathered. That evidence might turn out to have led the researcher down the wrong path but even understanding why that happened can be valuable.
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This is an interesting topic (here I'm referring to the last 2 pages).
As a physicist, I only consider Science a tool. Everything related to the normal life, i.e. teaching your kids to behave and helping other people has very little to do with Science, and lots more with personality, charisma and former experience in addition for eye of a situation. Intelligence tests, like discussed here, are unreliable since they have many hidden depencies. Based on my own form of intelligence analysis (which I cannot disclose here since it is based on my life experience and doesn't leave a paper trail), many a farmer I have met here could easily be, if not Researchers, at least Engineers in the Universities. So they are definetely not stupid, even though those tests might label them as one.
Also another thing I would like to add here, is that Science has always been the lap dog of the current elite. Even in Soviet Union and in nazi Germany Scientists (maths, physics and engineering, to be exact) enjoyed partially relaxed rules, since even the dictators understood too strict ideology will suffocate the creativeness, useful inventions and research. Not so with artists and writers. So a little bit of honesty here.
I don't personally like it when Science is elevated to the position where some people consider it almost like a form of Religion. Claims like "objectiveness" and such are nonsense. This is the reason I brought the examples of former paragraph into the discussion. It is pretty damn easy to appear as "objective" if you already know what will happen before the test is conducted and if the other guy doesn't know about it. Try to do that with something new, and you will find yourself thinking why the hell it didn't happen as it was supposed to go. Some scientists find new research areas there, some scientists will sweep the test under the carpet as "not fitting to the theory". This is of course related to the moral of a researcher, but I don't see Religion as prequisite for morals. Also, the pure Science as in text-book definition of Science, in my opinion, is only possible if you have job and do the research during your free time. Otherwise it is pretty much singing the notes of the people who fund your research.
Also, to dwelve in the Metaphysics, there are some interesting historical commonalities in the beliefs, like far-seeing, for example, can be found in many cultures. Has anyone considered why is this so?
Another interesting thing is that why do the signs of zodiac find such a resonance in general population? I don't simply buy the explanation that it's possible to write a general formula for the horoscope so that it will fit seemingly enough many qualities of sufficient amount of people.
Why does there exist the said number of zodiac signs for example? And how are the horoscopes of different cultures related? I've been thinking that the situation kids are born in might be drastically different in winter and summer and I don't see it too far-fetching that it could influence ones personality.
I have myself had several experiences regarding far-sensing/far-seeing depending how you define it, and as a physicist I know it is impossible to prove it. However, I know what I saw and as I checked the situation, it always turned out to have happened, or to be true.
There's something to think about,
Mika
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What verifiable facts does religion give us? I dont think you could point to any examples, but even if you did what verifiable facts does religion give us that science inherently cant?
Ever sat down and read the entirety of Genesis in the Christian religion? It's an excellent metaphorical version of Big Bang theory as its understood today. Verifiable fact? Not really. A useful interpretation of the existence of the world at the time of its writing? Absolutely. Religion does not yield verifiable facts as science does, which is why science has evolved as the method of choice for understanding the world - something I'm not disputing (if I were, I should be a priest, not a scientist).
:eek2: I honestly cannot believe you of all people just wrote that in all seriousness. Do you happen to think Nostradamus' prophecies were knowledge as well, just because we can twist them into fitting real world events today?
And how on earth was Genesis ever usefull? The Bible also talks about a global flood and Christian Creationist Geologists years before Darwin searched for many years for the evidence of this global catastrophe but eventually had to admit there was no evidence for it and that the earth was in fact old. It tells of animals being created fully formed and man out of dust with nothing but magic words. It talks of talking animals and food falling from the sky. It talks of the sun standing still, the earth being built on pillars and fixed to its foundation so it cannot move and that it has windows in the sky (firmament) that lets water in. Call these parts an analogy, metaphor and parable if you want to but you cant try and tell me Genesis was refering to the Big Bang or that this story was in any way some kind of usefull interpretation of the existence of the world at the time. They made it up, because they had no idea.
Lastly, the publics ignorence regarding science is an education issue. It is a failure of the scientific community in part, in not having more spokesmen like Carl Sagan.
We trust that published discoveries are true to the extent they can be by the method until we see otherwise.
Do we? Then what is peer review for and what happenes when new discoveries and papers are submitted against that research? You make out that nothing is ever challenged in science. That scientists put papers out and everyone just assumes its true until someone accidently does some experiment which assums that a previous paper is correct, and it fails because it was wrong.
The perpetual skepticism of science has been greatly reduced since its earliest days. Ultimately, we tend to accept things as true until shown otherwise, rather than accepting things as false until given
convincing data in support of them as the scientific method tells us to.
If you are referring to the public I would probably agree.
There is a degree of trust and certainty in every scientific discovery and experiment, which equates to faith as you yourself stated.
Tentative belief is not faith. Faith is complete adherence to a belief where evidence is irrelevant. Its the very reason why you have the phrases "he lost faith" or that someone is "having a crisis of faith" because faith is complete trust and complete confidence in belief. Once you stop having complete confidence, once you start to doubt your beliefs you no longer have faith which is the reason why we have those phrases. If you are just using faith as another word for trust then its not the same kind of faith and irrelevant.
I never said the Bible wasn't flawed; it's a greatly flawed document, great story but not even an approximation of history. metaphorically we can see how its meaning fits modern theory, but there are large chunks of the Bible that were cut to essentially fit the political nature of the period. Do not interpret my saying that science requires faith at some level to mean that I believe religious texts are a better way of understanding the world.
I know you never said that. The reason I bought it up was that arguing against the scientific community isnt an argument against science itself.
So what are the flaws of the scientific method, and how can we make it better? If religion coulld really verifiably increase our knowledge in ways science cant, then the scientific method must be lacking in something.
The scientific method is incapable for accounting for all the variables in a problem; as such, we need either a way to include all the variables.
If science claimed to be able to produce absolute truth then it would have to account for all the variables, but it doesnt. So again Im asking you what can be improved in the scientific method to gather more accurate knowledge?
Like it or not, science was born of religion.
"In" religion maybe, not "of" it. Religion is and always was inherently against self correction. They can and have changed their minds about a relatively small amount of irrelevant parts but their core beliefs will stay the same. When the Council of Nicea convened in 325CE they voted by committee about the relationship of Jesus to God. They didnt debate if God existed or how much evidence they had for him.
Without religion in the earliest days of our history, we would not have science today. There was nothing fundamentally wrong with religion (it was a knowledge-producing institution) until power entered into it.
You really think they questioned all their beliefs with all the skepticism of the scientific method, throwing out beliefs that were not based on any evidence?
Religion led mankind to question and to wonder, and to seek answers before science ever existed. Today, that role is entirely different, but it was necessary to where we sit in contemporary society.
Religion did that, as did philosophy. But religion, becuase its based on faith not evidence wont change its mind based on evidence, lack of evidence or even evidence to the contrary. Because if they did they wouldnt have had faith anymore.
Just because science is the sole institution producing verifiable fact today doesn't mean that it requires no faith; one does not negate the other. You have faith in the evidence, even though science tells us the evidence is only an approximation of reality. I won't dispute that evidence-based knowledge is the sole primarily useful form of knowledge, but we have erroneous or a lack of evidence in a great many things, yet you fundamentally accept those things as true.
Do I? Do you understand what a tentative belief is?
We have no evidence that supports existence on a higher plane of existence (call it what you will) at present but that does not necessarily mean it will always be so. Similarly, at one time we had no evidence that the atom was divisible, yet subsequent discoveries made that possible.
True. Maybe we'll discover evidence Thor is real or that we really are in a form of The Matrix, but why is disbelieving those for lack of any reason to believe in them, faith?
I don't pretend to know one way or the other about a great many things, including higher planes of existence, but I don't pretend that I can dismiss the possibility outright, just as I don't dismiss the possibility tthat our understanding of gravity is flawed. We just don't know. I work based on the evidence we have at present, and skepticism prevents me from accepting possibilities that seem patently ridiculous at present, but this does not mean I have absolute conviction that the evidence to date is completely true.
Confusingly you wrote exactly what I have been saying all this time, I thought. But Im glad we agree here and I probably couldnt have said it better myself.
I'm not talking about religion, I'm talking about the fallibility of the scientific method and the scientific community that uses it to demonstrate that complete trust in scientific evidence amounts to faith.
Complete trust is faith, thats right.
Nothing has been proven beyond a reasonable doubt. Probability does not at all equate to near-certainty. We can only support theories, not prove them or near-prove them, something a lot of believers in science tend to overlook.
I know beyond reasonble doubt isnt "near proving" something, I only put it that way because thats what they say in law. What I meant was that the theory has been shown to be so well supported that it would be irrational and unreasonable to say you dont believe in it, eg. Evolution. Obviously I dont mean a theory is ever "proven" absolutely, in fact thats what Ive been saying all along. That there is no absolute knowledge to be found.
Well Im not, so Im not sure why you assumed all this about me in order to ask the question.
Your responses to date have shown a reluctance to accept the fluidity of scientific discovery. You seem to believe the evidence is usually right, whereas I believe the evidence is usually wrong and its only a matter of time until it is improved upon.
Why is everything so black and white? Darwin was wrong about many things as was Newton, but that doesnt mean they werent right as well.
Yes I know and if I drop an apple there is a chance it could fly up into the air instead of fall to the ground. We could all really be in the Matrix or just be apart of some Zen dream but that isnt likely and science isnt going to pay much attention to such philosophical post-humanistic masturbation without a good reason. Lots of things are possible but far less things are probable. Gods could be real, Im certianly not denying that, but I also dont think its at all probable enough to believe in. So, I dont believe in Gods, since I see no reason to believe in one.
Ah, but science does pay attention to the improbabilities - that's how new influential discoveries are usually made. Not to mention, improbabilities have a real nasty way of screwing up experiments. Error/improbability/uncontrolled variables are the most important part of science.
You're just being pedanatic now. The point was science has no reason to consider the highly improbable like The Matrix or Gods and it doesnt take faith to disbelieve them if you have no reason to believe them.
-Lamarckian theory, its precursors, and derivatives.
-Early Freudian psychology
Those are two fairly well known examples that are completely wrong - Freudian personality theory is STILL taught in University psychology classes, including the stages of development, id/ego/superego, and oedipus and electra complexes. Lamarckian theory is still confused by a great many people as being part of evolution (hence the failure to comprehend natural selection). Two scientific figures and their discoveries that were entirely false, yet still remain in the public consciousness. There are many others.
Thankyou for that now I know what you are refering to. I dont know enough about Psychology or what they teach in the classes to comment on Freud. However regarding Lamarckian evolution, this was proven wrong by scientists that questioned it. Darwins errors have been corrected, Newtons errors have been corrected and Lamarckism was show to be wrong. This doesnt seem to help your postion that scientists dont question each other and just go around accepting each others theories on faith.
Except I would agree with that but thats hardly the same as thinking science is 100% infallible and can provide absolute knowledge.
Close enough.
Well, no, actually its not close at all. The only part I could see that I would take issue with is the part that said science produces good evidence "most of the time". I would say that science corrects its mistakes pretty well, most of the time.
As I said, twice, science is an approximation of a rational method and it yields usually negative findings or bad conclusions that eventually lead to better (but still false at some level) conclusions. The drift distance between what you agree with and what you've written as bad understanding is minimal.
We were able to improve our understanding of the universe by questioning geocentricity. We were able to improve our understanding of evolution by questioning Darwins original ideas. We were able to improve our understanding when we questioned Steady State theory. We were able to improve our understanding of light with Newtons research and when we questioned Newtons theory of Gravity we also improved out understanding. I agree our knowledge now is still partly wrong even with the best theories, it always will be as we can never know everything with absolute certianty and theres always more to learn. But why do you put it the way you do? Its the best we can do and you still havent told me why tentatively accepting something is faith? Science is the very antithesis of faith.
The second issue I think is a seperate issue and its that you claim religion is also a knowledge producing institution. I think even if science was 100 times worse than you make out religion would still be inherently useless as a knowledge provider.
"This is precisely why religion and science are actually two disparate forms of the same-knowledge producing structure.....science and religion are historically two halves of the same whole... Both have a role to play..."
And this is what Im challenging you on.
*blink* "Historically" has heavy emphasis in all my posts. Religion was a useful knowledge-producing structure at one point in history, much as science is today. And again, without early religion we never would have gotten science.
1. You only started talking using the past tence after a few posts, as you can see you did use the present tence several times. But if thats not what you meant it did come accross that way.
But okay lets forget that, if you mean historically I take issue with that as well. When was religion ever a knowledge producing structure? Science being used by religions doesnt count, thats still science. Im talking about a verifiable increase in knowledge by religion that science inherently couldnt accomplish. I mean if you're going to say they are two seperate ways we can gain knowledge, you should be able to show me how we can gain knowledge from religion, right?
2. Without early religion you wouldnt have got science? Maybe. The Greeks might be said to be the ones that originated the modern scientific method. But later, the church wouldnt have helped a lot of science. But I know they did do it. Geology was performed by Christian Creationists. And Darwin called himself a Naturalist who wanted to be a Priest, Naturalist not being another word for atheist back then, but ironically was what someone that wanted to study gods creation called hismelf. Historically dogmatic faith has only hindered science, for example, there must have been a world wide flood or that evolution couldnt be true. The father of taxonomy, Carl Linnaeus centuries before Darwin stated something he would never know the true significance of, he pleaded with the very Creationist "scientific" community at the time to listen to him.
"I demand of you, and of the whole world, that you show me a generic character... by which to distinguish between Man and Ape. I myself most assuredly know of none" - Carl Linnaeus, 1788
I don't think you understood my original point. Briefly summed up: scientists know every result and every conclusion has some element of "wrongness" to it, but they ignore it and consider their findings a best guess.
Well from what you've been saying this "element of wrongness" is understading that no matter what we do science can never be 100% accurate and 100% certian about anything. Well yes, but so what? I dont consider ignoring this post-humanist nonsence as some kind of failing unless there is an actual failure with the experiment that can objectively be shown to have had a real and observable impact on the conclusions drawn.
Those 6 points are the contributing elements that lead to that conclusion. Point 5 tells us that our results can never be correct, because measurement interferes with the natural mechanics of a phenomenon.
What you said was that we cannot measure anything perfectly. In other words, we cannot know something with absolute certianty. Big deal, lets be practical and just try and get the most accurate understanding of the universe that we can and move forward trying to correct our mistakes and keep learning and gathering more facts rather than crying because we cant really know anything for sure, I mean gosh, we might not even exist.
Walter's canon is the same thing (essentially) as Occam's Razor; we assume the simplest explanation in agreement with the evidence to be correct, yet gravity (to continue to pick on poor old Newton) is just one theory where that wasn't actually the case.
So Newtons theory did not agree with the evidence? Sure he was wrong in several ways, but he wasnt totally wrong and you can still use his theory and get accurate results so long as you dont apply it to every situation.
I've never heard a Creationist espouse my argument, mostly because it requires an in-depth knowledge of the scientific method itself.
I post on an anti-evolution message board and have argued with Creationists for going on 8 years now. Ive heard probably all the arguments Creationists have ever made and believe me they do certainly argue what you have been. You see, their idea is that Creationism is better than science because the Bible doesnt change, its absolute. Science they argue keeps changing. Look how many times they've had to correct themselves! They say. That science doesnt know anything with absolute certianty but they do, they KNOW god exists and they KNOW the Bible is true and they KNOW evolution is wrong and they KNOW God created.
They approximate it by trying to say there are things science can't understand, makes mistakes on, or is fooled by God, but I've never heard one point to a intellectual leap of faith (as I've constructed it) by science. They'll say we take things on faith like peer-reviewed journals and specialists and try to equate that to Holy texts all the time, but that facile argument is not the one I'm making here.
Well it pretty much is, but they also do literally make the argument that you have to have faith in science (to accept things like evolution. ) That science is based on faith, that science teaches you how not why. Etc etc. I mean you even said that Genesis sounds like the Big Bang Theory and that this was some kind of point that it was therefore a good and usefull form of knowledge back then. Aside from that they do usually take it a lot further than you do, but still Ive heard the same arguments more or less come from them as some of the ones I have heard from you, rather bizzarly.
Ed
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I'm tired of writing about gangs and moral panics for the moment, so I decided to take a "break" and return to this unholy (pun intended) mess =)
I honestly cannot believe you of all people just wrote that in all seriousness. Do you happen to think Nostradamus' prophecies were knowledge as well, just because we can twist them into fitting real world events today?
And how on earth was Genesis ever usefull? The Bible also talks about a global flood and Christian Creationist Geologists years before Darwin searched for many years for the evidence of this global catastrophe but eventually had to admit there was no evidence for it and that the earth was in fact old. It tells of animals being created fully formed and man out of dust with nothing but magic words. It talks of talking animals and food falling from the sky. It talks of the sun standing still, the earth being built on pillars and fixed to its foundation so it cannot move and that it has windows in the sky (firmament) that lets water in. Call these parts an analogy, metaphor and parable if you want to but you cant try and tell me Genesis was refering to the Big Bang or that this story was in any way some kind of usefull interpretation of the existence of the world at the time. They made it up, because they had no idea.
Contextual frame of reference. This was how the world was understood at the time of writing. That doesn't mean its invaluable or not useful. This understanding of functional laws of the universe guided civilization for many, many years. I wouldn't call that irrelevant knowledge. You see to be dismissing every form of understanding that didn't come out of modern science as useless, but you're forgetting that without these early forms of knowledge we wouldn't have a science to work with. I'll come back to this a little later, but in the meantime, recall that genesis is one of the LATER creation mythologies.
Do we? Then what is peer review for and what happenes when new discoveries and papers are submitted against that research? You make out that nothing is ever challenged in science. That scientists put papers out and everyone just assumes its true until someone accidently does some experiment which assums that a previous paper is correct, and it fails because it was wrong.
Peer-review weeds out the quacks and bad interpretations; it doesn't eliminate error, bias, or even fraud. Very LITTLE in "good" science is ever challenged, especially by peer-review.
Tentative belief is not faith. Faith is complete adherence to a belief where evidence is irrelevant. Its the very reason why you have the phrases "he lost faith" or that someone is "having a crisis of faith" because faith is complete trust and complete confidence in belief. Once you stop having complete confidence, once you start to doubt your beliefs you no longer have faith which is the reason why we have those phrases. If you are just using faith as another word for trust then its not the same kind of faith and irrelevant.
You and I have complete trust that the scientific method is valid, reliable, produces good results in the long term over many experiments, and yields as good a guess that is possible. We both KNOW that this may not at all be the case and very likely isn't, but we believe it anyway because we have no evidence to the contrary. I call that faith, not tentative belief.
If science claimed to be able to produce absolute truth then it would have to account for all the variables, but it doesnt. So again Im asking you what can be improved in the scientific method to gather more accurate knowledg?
The ultimate objective of science is to produce knowledge as close to absolute truth as possible.
"In" religion maybe, not "of" it. Religion is and always was inherently against self correction. They can and have changed their minds about a relatively small amount of irrelevant parts but their core beliefs will stay the same. When the Council of Nicea convened in 325CE they voted by committee about the relationship of Jesus to the God. They didnt debate if God existed or how much evidence they had for him.
Ah, someone's been paying too much attention to contemporary religions. Early Christianity and Islam were not at all against self-correction, they were aginst outside correction. But they're poor examples. If we go back even farther, we can talk about the Sumerians, Egyptians, Minoans, Mycenaeans, the Greeks. All of these civilizations had religions that were self-correcting. Ditto for the Romans, though to a lesser extent. None of these religions acted contrary to the know facts of their historical period. That's what makes Christinaity and Islam somewhat unique historical cases.
You really think they questioned all their beliefs with all the skepticism of the scientific method, throwing out beliefs that were not based on any evidence?
Religious beliefs, up until the Enlightenment, were never in contradiction with observable fact at their period in time. If they ended up in conflict, belief was adjusted as necesary (the Greeks before and after the Persian invasions are an excellent example of this; it inverted their religion).
Religion did that, as did philosophy. But religion, becuase its based on faith not evidence wont change its mind based on evidence, lack of evidence or even evidence to the contrary. Because if they did they wouldnt have had faith anymore.
Ah, but they used to. Not now, not with modern religions so much, but that's a different story altogether.
Do I? Do you understand what a tentative belief is?
You hedging your argumentative bets to evade the question of faith as I've thus far defined it in relation to science? :P
Why is everything so black and white? Darwin was wrong about many things as was Newton, but that doesnt mean they werent right as well.
Hey, you're the one who set a black and white tone to set things off here (useful versus useless knowledge, dichotomy of science OR religion). I'm fully aware that discoveries advance through time - that;s rather been my point all the way through here.
Thankyou for that now I know what you are refering to. I dont know enough about Psychology or what they teach in the classes to comment on Freud. However regarding Lamarckian evolution, this was proven wrong by scientists that questioned it. Darwins errors have been corrected, Newtons errors have been corrected and Lamarckism was show to be wrong. This doesnt seem to help your postion that scientists dont question each other and just go around accepting each others theories on faith.
Which totally evades my original point - that much of science is patently false to begin with and is only changed over time to reflect understanding at later points in time. But that knowledge is never actually true, it just better reflects the evidence. Lamarckian theory and Freudian theory are two spectacular examples of how erroneous scientific conclusions have pervaded throughout time, as much of science does. Both were accepted for so long because we believed in the methods that produced them, yet the results were patently false.
But why do you put it the way you do? Its the best we can do and you still havent told me why tentatively accepting something is faith? Science is the very antithesis of faith.
The scientific method is the antithesis of faith - our belief in the validity and reliability of the scientific method requires a leap of faith because we have no evidence that it is valid or reliable most of the time, but rather the opposite. Science only becomes valid and reliable with immense periods of time. Now, if you want to say you're tentatively accepting science because its the best guess you can try to get away with that, but the vast majority of people never question the basis of science or its conclusions, and thus rely on faith in the method to determine that its conclusions are correct. Like I said, all you're doing by bringing up tentative belief/acceptance is trying to circumvent the concept of faith by saying "but no, I'm really skeptical of science all the time" but we both know that's not the case.
But okay lets forget that, if you mean historically I take issue with that as well. When was religion ever a knowledge producing structure? Science being used by religions doesnt count, thats still science. Im talking about a verifiable increase in knowledge by religion that science inherently couldnt accomplish. I mean if you're going to say they are two seperate ways we can gain knowledge, you should be able to show me how we can gain knowledge from religion, right?
Referring back to early Christianity as well as the half-dozen other religions I've mentioned, in their earliest forms these were structures that led to useful knowledge about the world. Why does the sun rise and set? Because a god pushes it across the sky in a regular fashion at the same time each day. Throughout history, religion provided knowledge about the daily lives of the people living them. Just because science has essentially replaced that function today does not mean for one second that these were valueless contributions then. Religion served as a rudimentary science, and a useful one at that, for millenia.
I dont consider ignoring this post-humanist nonsence as some kind of failing unless there is an actual failure with the experiment that can objectively be shown to have had a real and observable impact on the conclusions drawn.
Faith. First off, nothing is objective. Doesn't exist. Second, why does an effect have to be observable to be important? You assume they aren't, but that unobservable effect could be destroying your conclusions.
Big deal, lets be practical and just try and get the most accurate understanding of the universe that we can and move forward trying to correct our mistakes and keep learning and gathering more facts rather than crying because we cant really know anything for sure, I mean gosh, we might not even exist.
Never said we shouldn't. I'm just saying we need to acknowledge a certain element of irrationality in our ultimate method and recognize that we are making a leap of faith, to some extent, in every accepted conclusion. We are putting universal trust in the method at that particular moment.
So Einstein produced no evidence for his theory?
That wasn't my point, you're drifting away again. I was pointing out that Newton's simpler explanation of gravity was assumed to be correct by the scientific method, yet it was only upon the introduction of Einstein's work that we found it was actually more complex. Einstein's work fit with his evidence, as did Newton's, yet the evidence available immediately prior to Einstein's work still pointed to the simpler of the two conclusions (even then, a rudimentary understanding of the evidence Einstein used could still lead to Newton's conclusions as the simpler of the two explanations). But let's cease drifting; Walter's Canon is yet another part we accept in the regular conduct of science that isn't actually true, but we accept it as such anyway.
Aside from that they do usually take it a lot further than you do, but still Ive heard the same arguments come from them as I have from you, rather bizzarly.
Then you're not reading this carefully enough.
Creationism's goal is to undermine science as a fluctuating naive method lacking in understanding.
My purpose is this now-ridiculously-long subthread is to demonstrate that every scientist, at some level, requires an element of acceptance in the scientific method which is not entirely rational nor based on the evidence at hand, yet is accepted completely in order to further the regular conduct of science. That is where faith enters into science. It doesn't negate the discoveries, it doesn't mean science is irrational, it simply means that science is not as objective as some people would like to claim. That doesn't make religion a superior or even equivalent form of understanding today either. However, religion has historically played a role in the birth of modern science and is essence its other, irrational, half. Religion can exist without science, yet science could not exist without religion. Absence of religion implies an absence of faith and a willingness to accept some things as true or possibly true even though we fully and rationally know that might not be the case. In that absence, modern science of today's period could not exist, and in point of fact would never have developed in the first place.
Now, if you would like to ignore the historical convolutions of the subject and simply go with the assumption that science is uses an element tentative belief instead of using the word faith, that is certainly your perogative, but it doesn't for a second make that jump, however termed, anymore rational, logical, objective, or based on evidence.
In other words, science has not yet entirely escaped the clutches of philosophy, its integral function, or religion, its parent. It is still a fledgling discipline with old components of human thought and feeling drifting around its perimeter.
EDIT: And let me just say, if anyone else is actually still following this exercise in history/philosophy/semantics, I applaud them, because even I'm just about done on the subject =)
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Contextual frame of reference. This was how the world was understood at the time of writing. That doesn't mean its invaluable or not useful. This understanding of functional laws of the universe guided civilization for many, many years. I wouldn't call that irrelevant knowledge. You see to be dismissing every form of understanding that didn't come out of modern science as useless, but you're forgetting that without these early forms of knowledge we wouldn't have a science to work with. I'll come back to this a little later, but in the meantime, recall that genesis is one of the LATER creation mythologies.
No, Im sorry. I asked you to show me where religion has ever given us facts. This apparently was your best example, a made up myth by an ancient people that incidently borrowed and changed an earlier myth. Making things up when you dont know something can never be a fact, Ryan! It can never be knowlege! This is what Im talking about when I say some things you say make you sound like a Creationist.
Peer-review weeds out the quacks and bad interpretations; it doesn't eliminate error, bias, or even fraud. Very LITTLE in "good" science is ever challenged, especially by peer-review.
Since you are so black and white, I assume "eliminate" to you means " eliminate 100%" because peer review is done with the precise goal of eliminatting error, bias, and fraud. Does it succeed all the time? Of course not but no one ever suggested it ever did.
But to keep implying it never does and scientists dont question each other is just ridiculous. It happenes all the time. Dr Ken Miller humerously joked in his lecture on Intelligent Design (you can find on google) that "paleontologists will fight about anything!", even whether to call some fossil a mammal-like reptile or a reptile-like mammal. If what you were saying was really true we wouldnt ever uncover fraud, we wouldnt correct errors and some well long accepted theories wouldnt just never be challenged but never accepted by the scientific community. Its like you accept that this has happened but act like it was just some kind of accident or something.
You and I have complete trust that the scientific method is valid, reliable, produces good results in the long term over many experiments, and yields as good a guess that is possible. We both KNOW that this may not at all be the case and very likely isn't, but we believe it anyway because we have no evidence to the contrary. I call that faith, not tentative belief.
You can speak for yourself. I only trust the scientific method because I cant see any better way of gaining more accurate knowledge. Complete trust would mean Im not open to any problems with it or a way to improve it, but I am.
If science claimed to be able to produce absolute truth then it would have to account for all the variables, but it doesnt. So again Im asking you what can be improved in the scientific method to gather more accurate knowledg?
The ultimate objective of science is to produce knowledge as close to absolute truth as possible.
To put it a better way sciences goal is to know as much possible about the universe and be as accurate as possible. "As possible", from the perspective of not being perfect. So its only the lofty desire that we should aim for, though we know deep down we can never attain absolute knowledge.
Ah, someone's been paying too much attention to contemporary religions. Early Christianity and Islam were not at all against self-correction, they were aginst outside correction.
The council of Nicea was very early Christianity, there was so much disagreement of peoples beliefs it was ordered that they get together and argue it out. Like I told you before, they werent debating the specifics of their religion but rather the details they didnt mind changing. Those that didnt want to change to the offical view were branded as unorthodox.
But they're poor examples. If we go back even farther, we can talk about the Sumerians, Egyptians, Minoans, Mycenaeans, the Greeks. All of these civilizations had religions that were self-correcting. Ditto for the Romans, though to a lesser extent. None of these religions acted contrary to the know facts of their historical period. That's what makes Christinaity and Islam somewhat unique historical cases.
Not sure why you evidently have such a loose definition of self correction. And the Sumerians are a strange example to cite as thats where the Biblical religion originated unless you mean the fact that their creation story changed as some kind of evidence for them changing their beliefs.
Religious beliefs, up until the Enlightenment, were never in contradiction with observable fact at their period in time. If they ended up in conflict, belief was adjusted as necesary (the Greeks before and after the Persian invasions are an excellent example of this; it inverted their religion).
Of course they were in contradiction. Do you really want me to point to all the crazy myths and legends in the Bible that dont fit with observable facts and never did?
Why is everything so black and white? Darwin was wrong about many things as was Newton, but that doesnt mean they werent right as well.
Hey, you're the one who set a black and white tone to set things off here (useful versus useless knowledge, dichotomy of science OR religion). I'm fully aware that discoveries advance through time - that;s rather been my point all the way through here.
I never said anything about "usefull" knowledge or "useless" knowledge. I said religion was useless as any kind of knowledge provider.
I challenged you to show me how it can or has ever provided us with knowledge, how it has ever provided us with facts. All you did was say there were scientists that followed the scientific method in religion and that Genesis provided facts about how the universe began. Its been a pretty weak argument so far regarding that.
Which totally evades my original point - that much of science is patently false to begin with and is only changed over time to reflect understanding at later points in time. But that knowledge is never actually true, it just better reflects the evidence. Lamarckian theory and Freudian theory are two spectacular examples of how erroneous scientific conclusions have pervaded throughout time, as much of science does. Both were accepted for so long because we believed in the methods that produced them, yet the results were patently false.
Your original point was that pretty much all scientists say "even though we know this data isn't actually true, we're going to accept it as our best guess because its all we have, and past guesses have led to improvement in understanding even if they were false)". Ive never heard anyone say anything remotely like what you even put in quote marks!
But Lamarckian theory was still show to be wrong by scientists. Sure it took a while, but it also took a while to uncover Piltdown man but that fraud only made it harder to commit a similar fraud in the future. Unless you were talking about the way the public believes everything (which Im not entirely sure they do but) its is irrelevant anyway.
The scientific method is the antithesis of faith - our belief in the validity and reliability of the scientific method requires a leap of faith because we have no evidence that it is valid or reliable most of the time, but rather the opposite. Science only becomes valid and reliable with immense periods of time.
Oh so theres your problem. That it takes time for error to be found out. Not really such a great revelation. Yes, sometimes it even takes a lot of time, but thats a failure of people as far as I can see, not the method. Repeated applications of the method ensures that errors, bias and fraud are usually quite good at being corrected or found out.
Now, if you want to say you're tentatively accepting science because its the best guess you can try to get away with that, but the vast majority of people never question the basis of science or its conclusions, and thus rely on faith in the method to determine that its conclusions are correct.
People, at least where I live, question science all the time. But we were talking about science, not the Scientific Community (though that is more relevant), but certianly not the public.
Like I said, all you're doing by bringing up tentative belief/acceptance is trying to circumvent the concept of faith by saying "but no, I'm really skeptical of science all the time" but we both know that's not the case.
Again, you can speak for yourself.
Referring back to early Christianity as well as the half-dozen other religions I've mentioned, in their earliest forms these were structures that led to useful knowledge about the world. Why does the sun rise and set? Because a god pushes it across the sky in a regular fashion at the same time each day.
That wasnt usefull knowledge! That wasnt even knowledge! They saw the sun rise and set. Good. That was easy. Thats an observable fact. They explained that by sayng their god pushes it round the sky. Oh dear, and they were doing so well. They made it up because they didnt know. This wasnt knowledge, even then. The only knowledge was the fact of the observations. But thats the start of science, not religion. Yet you say their made up cop out was some kind of usefull fact. If they were rational they would have stopped and said "we dont know why that happens", but they didnt, they just pretended they did.
Throughout history, religion provided knowledge about the daily lives of the people living them.
Religous people usually claim to "know" many things, but they dont really "know" them at all they only believe them. And please dont object to the word "know" in some post-humanist excitment like you did the word "objective" later on.
I dont consider ignoring this post-humanist nonsence as some kind of failing unless there is an actual failure with the experiment that can objectively be shown to have had a real and observable impact on the conclusions drawn.
Faith. First off, nothing is objective. Doesn't exist. Second, why does an effect have to be observable to be important? You assume they aren't, but that unobservable effect could be destroying your conclusions.
:sigh: Nothing is objective, yes yes. And we might not really exist. This might all be one big dream and we may all vanish in a puff of imagination. Maybe the universe was created last Thursday complete with memories and false history. Right, so you dont like the word objective? Ok, how about "rational", how about "reasonable", how about the word "practical"? If Im conducting an experiment and I ask you if you can find something wrong with it and you say, well you havent taken into account every single possible variable Im going to say.... uh huh... I know that, thats impossibe. So can you see any actual effects or variables that I havent accounted for that could be making it less accurate? Becuase if the only thing anyone can come up with is "well its not absolutely perfect in the post-humanist sence" Im probably going to be pretty happy with it.
Big deal, lets be practical and just try and get the most accurate understanding of the universe that we can and move forward trying to correct our mistakes and keep learning and gathering more facts rather than crying because we cant really know anything for sure, I mean gosh, we might not even exist.
Never said we shouldn't.
Ah but we might not! And so you're having faith that we acually exist! You're having faith we're not in The Matrix! You have faith Thor isnt real! You have Faith faeries arent real!
I'm just saying we need to acknowledge a certain element of irrationality in our ultimate method and recognize that we are making a leap of faith, to some extent, in every accepted conclusion. We are putting universal trust in the method at that particular moment.
The idea that in order to disbelieve anything requires faith even if we have literally no reason at all to believe in it, makes the word faith rather meaningless. But I will accept this definition of faith, so long as you accept its not the same in any way to religious faith, but I know you wont do that because then you cant compare the two.
That wasn't my point, you're drifting away again. I was pointing out that Newton's simpler explanation of gravity was assumed to be correct by the scientific method, yet it was only upon the introduction of Einstein's work that we found it was actually more complex. Einstein's work fit with his evidence, as did Newton's, yet the evidence available immediately prior to Einstein's work still pointed to the simpler of the two conclusions (even then, a rudimentary understanding of the evidence Einstein used could still lead to Newton's conclusions as the simpler of the two explanations). But let's cease drifting; Walter's Canon is yet another part we accept in the regular conduct of science that isn't actually true, but we accept it as such anyway.
You said Newtons theory wasnt the simplest theory that accounted for all the evidence. Sure, he turned out to be wrong though not completely and Einsteins General Relativity will no doubt probably be at least a bit wrong as well, but the more we question these things we collect more facts and are closer toward a more accurare understanding.
Then you're not reading this carefully enough.
Creationism's goal is to undermine science as a fluctuating naive method lacking in understanding.
I know you arent a Creationist, I know its not your goal. Im simply pointing out a similarity to some of their arguments.
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I've just read your whole reply, and there are a lot of things I could clear up, fix, reiterate because they've been missed, or dispute (early Christianity and the Sumerians in particular, but I'm not going there now). But I also realized three things:
1. We've drifted so far from the original point that its not even recognizable in roughly 90% of the discussion.
2. You've somehow missed the two singularly important paragraphs in my whole post.
3. We're not actually talking about the same things, whether by my miscommunication or yours, and no amount of furthering this pedantic exercise in intellectual futility is going to get the derailed train back on track.
So I'll conclude my part in this tangental mess with this: it is important for everyone to recognize the historical roots of science, philosophy, and religion, and to recognize that the most derived forms (e.g. science) could not today exist without their earliest precursors (e.g. religious institutions). It is also important to recognize that the scientific method is only an apprxoimation of rationality and as such, all its conclusions suffer from reliability and validity errors. Getting past those errors to further your belief in the fundamental reasonability of science requires either transitory belief (as Ed would put it), or Faith (as I tend to put it, mostly because I like stirring the pot and making those atheist types do a little self-reflection and consider agnosticism :P).
But yeah, I'm not dissecting another enormous post into minute detail for the sake of furthering what has now become a pointless discussion. So... good arguing with you, but we'll have to agree to disagree.
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I've noticed a persistent misinterpretation of the term "faith" in this thread to mean "unsupported and/or blind belief". It should be clarified that that's not what faith is. Faith is trust based on past experience: trust that A will continue to be A in the future, or trust that A will continue to lead to B. Thus you can have faith in God and faith in science at the same time; but "having faith in science" doesn't mean that you worship science or the scientific method as some sort of god.
This definition of 'faith' then does not apply to religion. Past experience in this context is based on knowledge, observation. The supported deductions and inferences from that. Since religion can not be objectively known, by definition, it is a 'way of knowing' not subject to this form of experience and thus not this definition of 'faith.'
My purpose is this now-ridiculously-long subthread is to demonstrate that every scientist, at some level, requires an element of acceptance in the scientific method which is not entirely rational nor based on the evidence at hand, yet is accepted completely in order to further the regular conduct of science. That is where faith enters into science. It doesn't negate the discoveries, it doesn't mean science is irrational, it simply means that science is not as objective as some people would like to claim.
Science merely attempts to prove the most probable. Philosophically one does not accept a hypothesis, one merely fails to reject. Because of this, one technically avoids leaps of logic and 'faith' in inferences. The only true assumption made is that there is an observable universe, and that data (observation) has meaning which reflects that universe. However this assumption is made by everyone to a degree in order to function in their daily lives. (otherwise it's a solpsistic, and rather nihilistic universe)
As for objectivity, there are plenty of cases of incredible biases and politically-driven research. Something that immediately comes to mind are the objections raised by an archaeologist who is just getting her tenure at Columbia University who has objected to entire archaeological sites in Israel being bulldozed because the researchers' political agenda overlooks evidence of occupation of 'non-Israelite' groups due to the political inconvenience. This is an extreme example, personal biases form the very foundation of research questions. But if one is aware of this fact, attempts to be more objective can be made. Objectivity is an ideal to be strived for, not an absolute.
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Science merely attempts to prove the most probable. Philosophically one does not accept a hypothesis, one merely fails to reject. Because of this, one technically avoids leaps of logic and 'faith' in inferences. The only true assumption made is that there is an observable universe, and that data (observation) has meaning which reflects that universe. However this assumption is made by everyone to a degree in order to function in their daily lives. (otherwise it's a solpsistic, and rather nihilistic universe)
Well you've summed up in one paragraph what I've been trying to say for two pages now. :D
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So I'll conclude my part in this tangental mess with this: it is important for everyone to recognize the historical roots of science, philosophy, and religion, and to recognize that the most derived forms (e.g. science) could not today exist without their earliest precursors (e.g. religious institutions).
Could you expand on that point? I've searched for the origin of philosophy and can't find a thing about religion.
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Global warming is being rammed down everybody's throats as a political solution despite the fact that the supposed effects of human activity are either a) impossible to correlate with actual climate change; or b) insignificant when compared to natural events (bovine methane generation, or deforestation from Hurricane Katrina).
I strongly disagree with this.
EDIT - one thing I noticed in this thread is that when talking about science, people allways mention honest, serious scientists. We're talking about science in general and it's effects on people, not just the scientific elite.
Therefore we have to take into consideration the common Joe and he like who , for the lack of better word do BELIEVE in science since they can't doublecheck the data or don't want to or don't have time to. If I had a dime every time somone quoted some utterly wrong piece of scientific info to me I'd be a rich man. and yet that stuck to that data claming I was ignorant or stupid or whatever. And I bet that happened to pretty much everyone on the net a lot of times.
So if a common Joe takes what scientists say as a unquestionable truth, then it does in many ways constitue as blind belief, as much as religion was.
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EDIT - one thing I noticed in this thread is that when talking about science, people allways mention honest, serious scientists. We're talking about science in general and it's effects on people, not just the scientific elite.
Therefore we have to take into consideration the common Joe and he like who , for the lack of better word do BELIEVE in science since they can't doublecheck the data or don't want to or don't have time to. If I had a dime every time somone quoted some utterly wrong piece of scientific info to me I'd be a rich man. and yet that stuck to that data claming I was ignorant or stupid or whatever. And I bet that happened to pretty much everyone on the net a lot of times.
So if a common Joe takes what scientists say as a unquestionable truth, then it does in many ways constitue as blind belief, as much as religion was.
Whether or not Joe Average wants to formally test the theory of gravity every time he brings it up is not under discussion. The fact of the matter is that Joe Average can formally test the theory of gravity if he so wanted to. He may regurgitate completely incorrect data because he's too ignorant or stupid to understand it, but the fact remains that he can actively reproduce the data if he so desires. Joe Average's belief is not blind, merely obscured. He can still see the data, he can still reproduce it and see tangible evidence. How he chooses to interpret or act on that data is irrelevant.
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EDIT - one thing I noticed in this thread is that when talking about science, people allways mention honest, serious scientists. We're talking about science in general and it's effects on people, not just the scientific elite.
Therefore we have to take into consideration the common Joe and he like who , for the lack of better word do BELIEVE in science since they can't doublecheck the data or don't want to or don't have time to. If I had a dime every time somone quoted some utterly wrong piece of scientific info to me I'd be a rich man. and yet that stuck to that data claming I was ignorant or stupid or whatever. And I bet that happened to pretty much everyone on the net a lot of times.
So if a common Joe takes what scientists say as a unquestionable truth, then it does in many ways constitue as blind belief, as much as religion was.
There is no cause so correct you won't find idiots following it. I won't disagree that there are some people who believe in science without understanding what it is. Just like there are people who claim to be atheists that believe in God. :rolleyes:
There is a huge difference between saying that some people take science on faith and saying that science has to be taken on faith. You've said the latter before and you're still wrong.
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Well, if a "perfect christian/muslim/believer" can't be brought into this discussion, then neither can perfect atheists - ergo there will be a LOT of people who blindly believe in science without understanding or checking what they are talking about.
Whether or not Joe Average wants to formally test the theory of gravity every time he brings it up is not under discussion. The fact of the matter is that Joe Average can formally test the theory of gravity if he so wanted to
Lacking expensive equipment he can only test SOME of the theories.
What CAN or SHOULD be doesn't interest me in this matter...only what is.
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Lacking expensive equipment he can only test SOME of the theories.
What CAN or SHOULD be doesn't interest me in this matter...only what is.
And this is the heart of the problem. In the end your average Joe is as blind as he was during the Medieval Times. He is simply using the products engineered and researched by the Scientifical Community and is trusting that what people like me write in the publications is true. The only difference is that Latin has been changed to Mathematics and if you don't have necessary background (12 years of Maths and Physics) the theories will remain as mysteries.
In the end, rudimentary Mechanics is still the only thing that most people understand about Physics. And even that I'm not sure about.
Scientist's defence, "Check it yourself" doesn't really help in more complex subjects if the Average Joe doesn't believe it.
Mika
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Well, if a "perfect christian/muslim/believer" can't be brought into this discussion, then neither can perfect atheists - ergo there will be a LOT of people who blindly believe in science without understanding or checking what they are talking about.
I never said that there wouldn't be.
However I do take exception to you saying that every person takes science on faith because science has to be taken on faith. That is nonsense for the reasons I've posted before.
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Scientist's defence, "Check it yourself" doesn't really help in more complex subjects if the Average Joe doesn't believe it.
Mika
That's a really good point. In this thread alone we've seen an example of that (Goober and James Watson). Sure, he could pay to access the journals, but what does that do him if he doesn't have the background to understand the data presented (not saying he doesn't, just illustrating a point). Ultimately, there's a level of knowledge acquisition there that is a prerequisite yet is not easily attainable through self-teaching.
In theory, all of science is available to anyone who so chooses to investigate it. In practice, the sciences are a collection of elite disciplines managed by specialists which are difficult to gain a basis in even with access to the education and the equipment.
Of course, that doesn't mean science itself is taken on faith, merely that many of its followers exercise faith in order to be assurred that the conclusions are accurate. Complete trust and/or faith emerges in the intricate details of the scientific method, as I've already beaten to death arguing with Ed.
While I'm at this:
Could you expand on that point? I've searched for the origin of philosophy and can't find a thing about religion.
Not really a surprise if you aren't looking in the right places - it's not a fact that science/philosophy tends to advertise.
Philosophy has multiple definitions and none really reaches consensus but it is most usefully described as the intervening form between science and religion. Philosophy is not evidence-based, or at least it does not follow the scientific method, but relies essentially upon reason to generate logical conclusions about meaning. If that sounds airy-fairy, you're reading it absolutely correctly... philosophy is not one of my favorite points in the history of science.
Philosophy actually has no singular history, but was derived independently at different points in time both between and within multiple different civilizations. The reason you rarely find mention of its roots in religion is because its not a linear progression. Much of early philosophy concerned with meaning and ethics was derived from religion as an attempt to find ways to prove ethics and morality, and reason, without referring back to a deity. While that may sound anti-religious, some of its key players through history were profoundly religious individuals and moreover advocated complete reform (not abolishment) of religion. Socrates was one such fellow in the Western tradition. Eastern religions and philosophy had far blurrier lines, though unfortunately I haven't spent near enough time studying those particular nuances to give an accurate description.
Ultimately, religion gives us supernatural reason for belief. Philosophy takes that one step further, attempting to find reason for belief in a quest for knowledge. Early Enlightenment philosophy started towards the scientific method, looking at testable variables that affect known facts to explain beliefs. Philosophy then diverged into the basics of modern science, relying upon the scientific method to propose and test hypotheses, and modern branches of philosophy which at their highest levels are still concerned with meaning and belief (see existentialism as a general branch or Michel Foucault as an influential individual). The sciences then diverged again into the so-called hard sciences (mathematics, physics, chemistry, biology, and their derivative specialties) and the "soft" sciences (sociology, psychology, economics, anthropology, ad nauseum). The hard sciences diverged earlier from enlightenment philosophy and are based on strict empirical criteria, whereas the soft sciences diverged later and maintain more of their roots back into philosophy, which is part of the reason that sociology and psychology tend to produce work that is much harder to nail down into concrete fact - both of those disciplines still aim at meaning as their ultimate objective, where the hard sciences aim for explanation of observable fact.
Philosophy was born out of religion in an attempt to remove supernatural beings (not supernatural variables, those still remained a component for quite some time) from meaning, morality, and ethics. Some religious figures engaged in philosophical exercises, but for the most part its development resulted from an attempt to distance religion from everyday life. Hence why we would not have philosophy without religion, and ultimately science without philosophy.
That said, most modern philosophy is a bunch of metaphysical junk that isn't useful until you find yourself in a goofy discussion like this one =)
However I do take exception to you saying that every person takes science on faith because science has to be taken on faith. That is nonsense for the reasons I've posted before.
Correction: nonesense in absolutist or simplistic terms, yes. Nonsense in a much more intricate look at issues confounding science? Debatable. IMHO, of course.
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http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/7121025.stm
Thousands of people have marched in the Sudanese capital Khartoum to call for UK teacher Gillian Gibbons to be shot. Mrs Gibbons, 54, from Liverpool, was jailed by a court on Thursday after children in her class named a teddy bear Muhammad.
I rest my case.
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Am I the only one wondering if her own students deliberately torpedoed her?
But yes this is a case of not just stupidity but stupidity on a galactic scale.
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Must admit, I'm all for stopping all trade and aid to the Sudan, and when they scream 'That's not a fair response!', we can simply reply 'O RLY?'.
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Am I the only one wondering if her own students deliberately torpedoed her?
Reading some of the background, it sounds like there's no actual consensus even between Muslims.
My favorite quote from the article:
According to some agencies, some of the protesters chanted: "Shame, shame on the UK", "No tolerance - execution" and "Kill her, kill her by firing squad".
No tolerance should result in execution? Damn, there'd be a lot of dead Muslims in the Sudan too from the looks of things :P
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Must admit, I'm all for stopping all trade and aid to the Sudan, and when they scream 'That's not a fair response!', we can simply reply 'O RLY?'.
Right, because the majority should always have to suffer because of the actions of a minority! :rolleyes:
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With all that's going on in Sudan you'd think they had better things to do. :rolleyes:
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f***tards.
Muhammad is just a name like any others. Heck you could name a teddy bear Jesus and no Christian would flinch. And Jesus for Christians was God, while Muhammad was "just" a high prophet, thus human.
Stupidity on a galactic scale indeed! :ick:
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Must admit, I'm all for stopping all trade and aid to the Sudan, and when they scream 'That's not a fair response!', we can simply reply 'O RLY?'.
Right, because the majority should always have to suffer because of the actions of a minority! :rolleyes:
Well, to be honest, that wasn't a strictly serious suggestion, but on that note, I do find myself wondering how much of that aid actually gets where it is sent.
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Not much, I'm guessing, much like it didn't in Iraq under Saddam.
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Not much, I'm guessing, much like it didn't in Iraq under Saddam.
True. But to be fair, most of the those problems were caused by embargoes in the first place.
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Right, because the majority should always have to suffer because of the actions of a minority! :rolleyes:
Thousands in one city? Sorry but that oh so convenient minority card is off limits.
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Thousands in one city? Sorry but that oh so convenient minority card is off limits.
Some news agencies reported thousands of people took part in the protest, but a BBC reporter at the scene said up to a thousand marchers turned out.
Evidence of media exaggeration? Sorry, sweeping generalizations are now off the table.
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Assuming THAT report is correct. An that's jsut those who showed up becosue they were near/ it was convenient. How many think the death sentance is justified but havn't joined the protest?
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It could be surprisingly few actually. Those people who did come were brought in from their local mosques where they'd been whipped up into a frenzy by their imams. The media might be reporting a more moderate version of the story even in Sudan.
If you compare the numbers against the numbers from the cartoon row they are sadly lacking. Apparently the extremists could only find 30-40 people to protest against the decision to release the woman earlier today.
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Why arent they punishing the kids?
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Teddy teacher came from a different religious background, and therefore is fair game. It's all about religious intolerance.